An Introduction to Software Testing Life Cycle

Creating software that meets the needs of clients in the fast-paced, cutthroat environment of today is essential to success. That is the application of -An Introduction to Software Testing Life Cycle. Businesses have seen a notable decrease in post-production faults through the use of STLC, which has increased customer satisfaction and resulted in significant cost savings.

Firstly, let’s clarify what STLC is.

What Is Software Testing Life Cycle?

Software Testing Life Cycle, also called STLC, is the phases of the testing process during software development. Each step has clear goals, actions, and deliverables that serve as the input to the next stage.

An STLC helps teams:

Boost the agility of the testing process and its effectiveness.
Clearly state the objectives and standards for every project component.
Apply time constraints to project testing
Test and pass each new feature before adding it.
Make sure project requirements are met.

Some advantages of STLC include:

In the development cycle, we shift testing left. This ensures that feature specifications are transparent and that we build meaningful tests.
Systematic testing speeds up the testing process and helps teams find and fix problems more quickly.
It is easier for us to track project progress when we set well-defined goals and phases for testing.

One of the most widespread myths is that software development teams carry out software testing as a continuous process throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC), rather than completing it as a distinct task. This is particularly valid in the era of agile project management.

STLC vs SDLC: How Do They Differ?

The Software Development Life Cycle and the Software Testing Lifecycle have separate objectives and standards, although having overlapping timetables and being related to software development. We find it easier to track the progress of the project when we set well-defined goals and phases for testing.

The main distinction is that the SDLC is in charge of gathering requirements and developing features in accordance with them. In the meantime, STLC develops tests tailored to gathered requirements and confirms that features meet those criteria. It’s usually OK for features that the SDLC produces to perform better than necessary;

When STLC Tests perform better than necessary, the team is unnecessarily burdened.

When STLC tests perform better than required, the team is unnecessarily overloaded with work.

Moreover, both life cycles require the cooperation of stakeholders, DevOps, and testing teams.

Why Software Testing Life Cycle Preferred over Traditional Methods of Software Testing?

The Software Testing Life Cycle, or STLC, has a number of benefits over more conventional software testing techniques. Here’s why it’s more effective:

1. Early Bug Detection:

STLC emphasizes continuous testing throughout the software development process, catching bugs and defects early on. This lowers the total cost and effort needed for bug fixing by enabling developers to resolve concerns quickly.

2. Enhanced Quality:

Software Testing Life Cycle guarantees comprehensive testing of software components by adhering to an organized and methodical methodology, which produces products of a better caliber. Thorough test design, execution, and reporting aid in finding and fixing problems before they affect end users.

3. Faster Time-to-Market:

STLC enables parallel development and testing by incorporating testing operations into every stage of the software development life cycle.

We quicken the entire development process and guarantee that software solutions are delivered on schedule to satisfy consumer requests.

4. Increased Customer Satisfaction:

STLC contributes to the delivery of software solutions that are more dependable, approachable, and in line with customer expectations by detecting bugs early and improving quality.

5. Cost savings:

Defects that are found and fixed early in the development process cut down on rework, avoid expensive corrections later on and lessen the chance of them affecting project budgets and schedules.

What Are the 6 Software Testing Life Cycle Phases?

The six phases of the Software Testing Life Cycle each have their own set of deliverables, activities, and entry and exit criteria. Entry and exit criteria determine when a phase can begin and end. Deliverables and activities specify the steps to take and the anticipated outcome. While you can carry out some of these stages concurrently, you must complete earlier stages before others.

1. Requirement Test Analysis

The available specifications and requirements must be viewed, studied, and analysed by your important software testers. Specific requirements are fed with input data to achieve results. These specifications can be put to the test.
Both functional and non-functional requirements are examined by testers. They then have to select requirements that can be tested.

During this phase, we identify and prioritize test requirements, and brainstorm for requirement analysis.
You need to test the prerequisites for both automated and manual testing. This includes selecting those that are necessary. An active button should make something happen when clicked. The phone number input field should not accept submitted alphabets.

We ought to put these universals to the test at all times. However, the goal of the requirement analysis step is to learn more precise information about the product. You must discover what the perfect state of the product should be. During this phase, we produce a comprehensive requirements report and a feasibility analysis for test automation.

2. Test Plan Creation:

In the STLC Process, the tester identifies the critical step for deciding all testing strategies: test plan creation, where they calculate the project’s total projected work and expense. Following the successful conclusion of the requirement analysis phase, this phase begins. This phase provides the documentation for the testing strategy and effort estimation. Before test case execution can begin, Test Plan Creation must be successfully completed.

3. Test Case Development

You design a series of tasks, called software tests, to verify or disprove the capabilities of your software through mathematical or technical tests.The test activities include testing code, writing test cases, and generating report cards or similar visual aids.

The best test case to run will then be selected. Typically, a quality manager or quality architect is in charge of this. Next, you will produce a test report, which includes the details of the execution, a code sample, and a description of what happened during the execution.
This information helps engineers understand what was tested, who validated what was tested, and what the expected results were.

Creating automation scripts and test cases (if applicable)
Examine scripts and test cases to establish core values.
Make test data in your test environment, if you have one.

4. Environment setup:

Test Case Development in the Software Testing Life Cycle can begin concurrently with test environment setup, which is a separate task. In the manual testing process, a few key pieces of hardware and software are required to set up a test environment.

This step is crucial since environment testing cannot be performed without it.Senior developers establish the testing environment; the testing team does not assist with its setup.

5. Test Execution Phase

When you have configured the test environment and provided the necessary functions and tools, it’s time for you to execute the test.
You can complete this task on a workstation or virtual machine, depending on your needs. This could be a brief synopsis of the test case, a report card, or a sample of code.

6. Test Cycle Closure

In the Software Testing Life Cycle, this covers a number of tasks, including reporting on test completion, gathering test completion matrices, and reporting test outcomes. You will take the next big test step, catch up with other teams, and talk about future test plans.
We produce a report containing information about the time invested and the proportion of bugs discovered in comparison to positive test results.When evaluating cycle completion requirements, consider the total number of defects discovered and resolved, the time involved, test coverage, cost, software, essential business objectives, and quality.

Based on the aforementioned parameters, create a test metric.
Document what you learned from your project
Preparation of final test report
Qualitatively and quantitatively report the quality of work results to the customer.
Examining the test results will reveal the distribution of errors according to their type and severity.

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Conclusion

Consequently, Software Testing Life Cycle is a procedure that can help you streamline your testing process and bring order to an otherwise disorganised procedure. Each step involves a number of considerations, including various testing tooling requirements.

Gradually, making effective use of time and resources is crucial to simplifying the testing process. Not only may a comprehensive STLC lead to faster issue fixes, but it also improves the quality of the final output. As a result, you’ll gain better brand recognition and a higher return on investment by raising customer happiness.