Phases of Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)

The software testing life cycle contains several phases, each of which is critical. The Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) is a set of actions that occur during the development of software. Described as a series of tasks carried out by a test team during the product testing process. This is a collection of activities carried out by the test team from the beginning to the completion of the project. The test activity starts with the requirements analysis phase and moves through each step until terminating in the test cycle's final phase.

Software testing life cycle phase

1. Requirement Analysis
2. Test Planning
3. Test Case Development
4. Environment Setup
5. Test Execution
6. Test Cycle Closure

Software testing requirements analysis

This is the first step in the software testing process (STLC). During this phase, the testing team examines the requirements documentation for testable requirements, including functional and non-functional elements.

In the event of ambiguity, the QA team can convene meetings with customers and stakeholders (technical leaders, business analysts, system architects, customers, and so on) to address their concerns. The acceptance criteria are documented and accepted by the customer after the QA team has clarified the requirements.

Test Planning For Software Testing

Test Planning phase starts soon after the completion of the Requirement Analysis phase. In this phase, the QA manager or QA Lead will prepare the Test Plan and Test strategy documents. As per these documents, they will also come up with the testing effort estimations.

Test case development for software testing

In this phase, the QA team creates test cases. If necessary, also create scripts for automation. Verification of both test cases and test scripts is performed by colleagues. The creation of test data is done in this phase. Test cases can be designed using two approaches

1. By knowing the Functions / Requirements which is Black Box Approach
2. By knowing the internal implementations which is White Box Approach

Test Environment Setup For Software Testing

During this phase, the test environment is configured and deployed. This phase may include various testing tools such as TestComplete, Selenium, Appium and Katalon Studio.

This phase may also include setting up a test server. Once the environment is deployed, smoke tests are run to ensure that the environment works as expected with all the intended functionality.

Test Execution For Software Testing

In the Test Execution phase, the test cases are executed in the testing environment. While execution of the test cases the QA team may find bugs that will be reported against that test case. This bug is fixed by the developer and is retested by the QA.

Completion of software test cycle

This is the sole phase in which the full cycle is assessed. Cycle completion criteria are evaluated by test team members based on quality, test coverage, time, software, cost, and important business goals. The group will also talk about what worked and what parts of the software testing life cycle process needed to be improved. The distribution of bugs by severity and type is analyzed and detected using bug and test case reports.

Test metrics and test completion reports are generated at the end of the test cycle.