Software Testing Tips & Tricks

When you hear the term “software testing,” do you think about one particular type of test — such as functional testing or regression testing — or do you immediately start visualizing the complex, interconnected web of test types and techniques that comprise the broad world of software testing?

Most experienced developers understand that software testing isn’t a singular approach, although, in the broadest sense, it refers to a collection of tests and evaluations that aim to determine whether a software application works as it should and if it can be expected to continue working as it should in real-world use scenarios. Basically, software testing aims to ensure that all the gears are churning smoothly and work together like a well-oiled machine.

So in this article, all the points are related to Software testing tips & tricks that you should know when you perform actual testing of any application.

Here are some of the Testing trips and tricks:

Don’t treat quality assurance as the final development phase

Quality assurance is not the last link in the development process. It is one step in the ongoing process of agile software development. Testing takes place in each iteration before the development components are implemented. Accordingly, software testing needs to be integrated as a regular and ongoing element in the everyday development process.

Encourage clarity in bug reporting

Reporting bugs and requesting more information can create unnecessary overhead. A good bug report can save time by avoiding miscommunication or the need for additional communication. Similarly, a bad bug report can lead to a quick dismissal by a developer. Both of these can create problems.

Use tools to make testing easy

Most technical leads will be familiar with the challenge of getting developers into the habit of making code testable. Therefore, top of your list of objectives should be ‘ease of use.’ Tests should be easy to write, and more importantly, trivially easy to run, by your development team. Ideally, all developers should be able to run all tests, in a single click, right from in their IDE. No excuses!

Automation is good, but it doesn’t fix poor test design

Test design must take into consideration all the areas of testing to be performed, but it should also identify high-risk areas or other specific areas where test automation would add the most value rather than leaving such decisions to be made ad hoc once development is in later stages.

Define entry and exit points

Understand your software application being tested completely. Here, we do take care of when and how the testing of a particular testing phase will start and end. So, this will help us to decide how and which automation testing framework can be involved for a particular testing stage.

Don’t skip load testing

Why is load testing so important? The world is a big place, and even if your application is brand new and you’re still trying to grow your user base, chances are more than one person will try to use it at any given time. If you’re not able to handle those users and that traffic, your company and application isn’t able to put your best foot forward.based on the results of that load testing, you can be better prepared for your users and give them the best possible experience.

Think outside of the box

More and more often we have to deal with assuring quality of various IoT developments. They require testers to become real users for some time and try the most unthinkable scenarios. What we recommend is to start thinking out of the box.

Always start with a product map

Early on in the project you should spend some time exploring the software, and try to model the features and requirements of the product. A graphical model can provide a concise, easy-to-understand representation of the product.

Make sure developers have the test cases

It is considered a good practice if tester gives his test cases to the developer to verify that all the important functionalities are developed properly before he releases the application for further testing. It ensures that re-work would be minimum since most important part of the application is taken care by the developer himself.

Write logical acceptance tests and do it early

During the release planning meeting, capture acceptance criteria and immediately add them as logical test cases linked to the product backlog item. This will help the team to understand the item and clarify the discussion. An even more important benefit of this tip is that it helps testers be involved and be important at the early stages of the software cycle.

Run an agile beta test

The single most defining feature of agile beta tests is the very short period of time available for the beta testing phase. Companies that ascribe to the agile method ‘release early, release often,’ so you need to gather feedback from users quickly in order to keep everything on track.

Regression testing is a crucial step

Regression testing involves testing the entire application (or at least the critical features) to ensure that new features or bug fixes haven’t inadvertently caused bugs to appear in other areas of the application. Because of its scope, regression testing is typically a process that involves automated tests, or at least some level of scripted manual tests to ensure that the key components of the application are tested.

Unit test every time you need to minimize risk

Unit test your product every time you need to minimise the risk and possibility of future problems. Unit testing is best utilised to smooth out the rougher edges of software development and is relatively cheap to perform when compared with, for example, the cost of delivering a broken build for user acceptance testing. Unit tests will help to identify problems during the early stages of the development cycle, before they reach the customer and the testing team. When problems are uncovered during code design and implementation, they’re likely to be fixed faster and at less cost. Each completed unit test brings you closer to a more robust and reliable system.

After functional testing, conduct integration testing

Checking the data flow between the modules or interfaces is known as Integration testing. In Integration testing we check if the data created in one module is reflected or transferred or shown in other respective modules.

Focus on high-priority bugs

High Priority Bugs should be prioritized on testing. These bugs have greater impact on the system and usually, it takes up more time in terms of testing. Mainly due to the complexity of the bug or perhaps the level of significance of it to the end-users.

Prioritize automation based on the tests that will need to be run most often

When choosing tests to automate, prioritize tests that will need to be run many times during the project. Some common candidates for automation are:

• Smoke and Regression tests: These tests verify the general functionality of the software. They may include performing simple actions such as adding, modifying, and deleting data.
• New Features/Functionality tests: When possible, automate new features/functionality once they have passed initial testing. Add these tests to the regression set so they can be run after each project build or when there is a release to QA.

Clear your browser cache

When testing the application, it’s always better to clear the cookies/cache of the browser unless it needs to be there while testing.

Testing in production is important

When you mention ‘testing in production‘ you might recall the days when developers snuck releases past the QA team in hopes of keeping the application up to date, but in reality it only caused a buggy mess. And users were the ones who suffered. For this reason, most businesses avoid testing in production altogether because it’s too risky for the end user. But there are problems with not testing in production, too. Test environments are rarely built out to the same level as production environments, so they can never really achieve the scale that you’d see in ‘real-life.’ Plus, testing environments can easily get stale and out-of-date – and as a result you aren’t testing what you ought to be.

Ask the right questions

Ask the right questions. Don’t just ask for the sake of asking. Try to understand the context and dependencies, then ask the questions that will give you deeper insights, help you understand, and enable you to build the right test cases.

Ref: 
www.softwaretestingclass.com/software-testing-tips-and-tricks-for-testing-any-application
www.softwaretestinghelp.com/practical-software-testing-tips-to-test-any-application