The Software Testing Life Cycle

Presenting a flawless?live video application?or integration to our clients is the ultimate goal of our work here at WebRTC.ventures.?Testing?is an integral part of the software development life cycle. The experience of our dedicated QA testing team located in our Panama City, Panama office allows us to implement efficient and expert testing for both full-scale development and standalone-testing clients.?

As I mentioned in my?previous blog post, software testing has become more important than ever. It has also evolved greatly over the past decades. Today, testing is not just about reporting bugs to the developer. It has a much broader scope and adds great value, especially when implemented from the beginning of the project. Software testing, too, has its own life cycle.?

Phases of the software testing life cycle

Validating is an essential part of the process to ensure precision and accuracy. Performing software testing is not an easy task and is carried out by our testing team in a sequential series of phases. Each phase of the STLC has a specific objective and deliverables. Let’s talk about each of them.

1. Requirement analysis

The requirements analysis starts each journey off on the right foot. We work closely with the client to understand the full nature of the project and then define the scope of testing, making sure there is alignment between our recommendations and the client’s expectations and goals.

2. Test Planning

The most important aspect of planning tests is to understand how to judge the application’s success.?We combine your success criteria with our best practices in building video apps to come up with an efficient test plan that focuses on delivering the highest value testing.?

During the planning phase, we will choose the project framework and the appropriate schedule and tools to manage the tasks and day to day activities across the project. We like to use?Slack, a simple communication tool with easy integration between different work teams. Other tools we use are?discord?and?google chat.

3. Test cases design & development

This is a complex stage and is a process that must be carried out iteratively. Based on the test plan, our QA team designs and documents test cases. Test cases should be long and cover as many variables as possible. All applicable permutations and combinations must be collected. We prioritize the test cases by investigating which of them are more common or which of them will have a greater impact on the product.

Subsequently, the verification and validation of the requirements specified in the documentation stage are carried out. In addition, the review, update, and approval of automation scripts and test cases are developed throughout this stage.

4. Environment setup

Test activities require certain environmental factors, such as servers, frameworks, hardware, and software, to run developed test cases. Our testing team relies on the knowledge and expertise of our?DevOps team, who are in charge of creating the environments with the necessary parameters for the execution of the tests depending on the particular requirements of each project. Our DevOps team also performs testing tasks in a different?layers?from a more specialized perspective, such as load testing and penetration testing.

In this phase, it is also important to ensure that the test team has the necessary tools to report the findings generated during the execution of the tests. Our team in particular relies on tools such as?TestLink,?Jira,?and?Trello?to control and manage our testing process.

5. Execution

The test execution process involves the implementation of the activities outlined in the test planning process. These tests are developed in planned test environments appropriate to the test level. The testing team is also responsible for comparing the expected results with the actual results. This is precisely what we do when we test one of our?custom interactive broadcasting?applications.

When a system failure is detected, it must be documented and sent to the development team to fix the defect. Once it has been corrected, we carry out a re-test to confirm that the defect has been successfully solved. Finally, we run a regression test cycle to guarantee that the debugging process has not triggered other defects in the system. It is during this phase that, as test experts, we ensure that the development complies with the usability and requirements of our clients.

6. Test cycle closure

Last, but not least, the closure phase consists of finalizing and archiving test cases and evaluating the testing process. As part of our deliverables, we generate a test evaluation report for the client that shows the traceability throughout the test cycle and the specific activities that were performed by the testing team.?

Do you want to see what this testing report looks like by the end of your next project? Let us know your needs and we will be glad to assist you in reaching your goal!

Testing & Ops Manager?Rafael Amberths?leads the work across our testing services.

At?WebRTC.ventures, we attach great importance to?software testing?in our development work and for our testing-only clients. Ensuring excellent quality in everything we do is part of what makes us unique as testing experts. If you are interested in learning more about what our testing services can offer to your business,?contact us today!