Importance of Software Testing in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

It is necessary to start software testing at the early stage of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) . It plays an integral role in the e...

It is necessary to start software testing at the early stage of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It plays an integral role in the elimination and capturing of errors and flaws during the early phases of software development, viz., design and gathering stages. As you start testing at the initial stages, you will be capable of reducing the total number of defects and the rework cost at the end. The different aspects of early testing are useful to the Quality Assurance managers as well as developers at the time of developing the testing strategy documents in the software development life cycle. Starting early testing will be useful in successful delivery of the product within the deadline.

Importance of Software Testing in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

For the release of a product or application in software development life cycle (SDLC), there are certain well-defined methodologies for majority of the principles of software testing.

Benefits Of Early Testing In SDLC

Generally, a project manager is assigned to the program management team for the release of an application in the market. This project manager along with other stakeholders and Development, Support, Quality assurance and marketing teams will come up with a good release schedule.

Testing Schedule Of Software Release

Majority of the business firms follow the TBR or Time based release where the product or software are planned for delivery, half yearly, and quarterly delivery. The Waterfall model is useful in this regard for the execution of such type of software releases. In certain cases if the release cycle is shorter, Scrum or Agile Model is known to be adopted.

During testing process, the testers need to identify the severe or crucial defects in the application. After this, the software developers require fixing such defects. Next to this, the testers require verifying those fixes.

Secondly, it is acknowledged by a wide array of software development firms that verifying and fixing the crucial or high severity bugs at a large number consumes a lot of time. In addition to this, it wastes a lot of resources. Besides this, it is prone to collateral, and fixing of the crucial bugs is known to be an integral part of the code, which include the intersection areas.

Also, if at the end of the release, if a plethora of crucial bugs are detected, then there are risks of negative development. There are high chances that the testing cycle might be extended. It might lead to the missing of deadline and release of the product might be getting delayed. A specific feature that includes a plethora of defects should be pulled out from the specific release.

The Other Defects

There are certain low and medium priority defects which are logged by and identified by the software testers. They should be handled by the software development and the testing team in an appropriate manner. Adopting early testing plays an integral role in the overall management of the software development life cycle for a certain release.

Scopes Of Early Testing

Early testing is a new activity that needs to be tracked during testing execution and it is recommended to adopt testing effort at any early stage:

Assumption

The whole software or project release schedule is approved after which it is made available to different stakeholders.

• The overall test strategies should be reviewed, developed and approved by the stakeholders
• The low, medium and high priority features that needs to be tested should be well documented
• The test cases and test plans for different features need to be reviewed, developed and approved by every stakeholder
• Every test case and test plans are known to be uploaded in the central repository to track the execution of software testing
• All the tools, infrastructure equipment’s and human resources are available to set up test beds and execution of test plans

Start And Exit Of Early Testing

It is a prerequisite that both the quality assurance and software development team should be brainstorming and agreeing to different approaches of the early test activities including the exit and start dates so that each of them can be on the exact same page.

For the entry to start, you need to have the total count of open bugs and the percentage of integration testing completion. There should be no blockers for starting the early test.

The activity stage includes the bug fixing approach, tracking technique, and bug verification approach, total number of code drips during software testing, and recording of testing results.

The exit criteria should be inclusive of the different hands-off activities for the next stage of software testing. It includes the resolution of unresolved bugs that are found during the early test. It also includes the publishing of the results of the early testing and resolution of blockers for the next immediate stage of software testing.

Advantages Of Early Testing

The early software testing is considered to be a smart choice for the waterfall model. It plays an integral role in identifying the crucial errors in the early phase of the testing cycle. It is also effective in finding the critical bugs during the early stage of the early cycle. It is useful to the software development team for the stabilization of the code during the early stage. In addition to this, it plays an integral role in reducing the collateral owing to the bug fixes. Also, it is useful to the software development team for identifying different vulnerabilities across the intersection areas in a detailed manner at the early phase of the release cycle.

It is useful in extending the test cycle and test coverage in an effective manner. It is also beneficial in the distribution of software testing and software development resources effectively and efficiently.

End users or targeted audience want a high quality of system or product which is free from any flaws. Validation of the software which is running on either of the products or system for the serviceability is considered to be the primary requirement. It is essential to understand the crucial components of the principles of software testing. Adopting software testing at the early phase helps in delivering a robust and high quality of product in the market.