The Role of Software Testing in IT Projects

Dear LinkedIn Community,

Welcome back to Velvetech’s IT Talks!

The nature of software projects is becoming more and more complex each year. Innovations come to market all the time, but IT leaders shouldn’t solely focus on creative ways of leveraging them. If anything, with each new and exciting software initiative, it is critical to ensure that the final tool is of high quality and meets user needs.

In this regard, software testing is of utmost importance. So, in this week’s edition, we will focus on this topic and answer the typical questions business leaders may have. Let’s take a look.

Q1: What kind of software tests should be performed on a typical IT project?

This may make us sound like a broken record, but of course, everything depends on the type of IT project in question. Software testing might vary for a mobile application vs. a web-based platform, and so on.

However, generally speaking, the following software tests should be carried out on a typical IT project:

• Unit Testing: when you test the individual components of a solution to verify that each one functions properly.
• Integration Testing: here, you must test how well individual components work together and whether they perform as needed.
• System Testing: as the name suggests, this is about testing the entire application to check that it meets the specified requirements.
• Acceptance Testing: helps evaluate whether the solution meets stakeholder or target user requirements and is fit for deployment.
• Usability Testing: here, you will be checking the system interface and ensuring that the user experience is smooth.

Generally speaking, the kinds of software tests you conduct will vary depending on project type as well as budget and timeline constraints. However, the above-mentioned tests are some of the most frequent that developers will turn to.

Q2: In agile development, testing can be more complex as this approach involves quick cycles and frequent changes. What are the best practices for testing in the agile context?

Indeed, agile development is all about quick sprints of software building and continuous work on making the solution better. This can make testing a bit more challenging. So, it’s worth involving software testers in the process from the beginning, at the idea discussion stage. As you can imagine, this can really diminish any risks because the tester can voice concerns before a single line of code is written.?

On a similar note, the best form of early testing is documentation testing which essentially helps the team estimate how much testing effort will be needed and plan accordingly.

Another important aspect to remember is continuous integration and delivery. This means that the process of building, testing, and deployment should be as smooth and automated as possible. Once again, this helps catch issues early and ensure the software is always in a releasable state.

Finally, don’t forget that agile testing requires close collaboration between team members. That’s the only way to minimize problems. Testers should work closely with developers to fix problems swiftly and stay on the same page.

Q3: How can we ensure that our testing initiatives are as efficient and scalable as possible?

Efficiency and scalability are important in any software project and they need to translate onto the testing process as well. To facilitate this, you should consider the following:

• Automate testing with the help of another tool
• Prioritize testing from the get-go and integrate it into the development process
• Use a risk-based approach and test the most critical parts of the app first
• Monitor and analyze how tests are working to ensure they are effective

Ask Us Your Questions

Thank you for checking out the thirteenth edition of our newsletter. Software testing is certainly an interesting and valuable topic to discuss so if you have any more questions about it – don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below! Velvetech’s specialists will be sure to respond to them soon.