Software Testing and Quality Assurance

Study Notes

Quality is the degree of excellence of something
In an IT product or service, quality is defined as "Meeting the requirements of the customer"
Quality is important for customer satisfaction and to meet the required functionality with user-friendly features

Cost of quality refers to "money spent beyond the cost of building the same product right the first time"
Prevention cost, appraisal cost, internal failure cost, and external failure cost are the different types of cost of quality

Correctness, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability are some of the quality attributes
For example, in a medical system, correctness is essential to ensure error-free patient medical history

Verification: "Did I make the product correctly?" (done at the starting of the development process)
Validation: "Did I make the correct product?" (done at the end of the development process)
Verification involves reviews, meetings, walk-throughs, and inspections to evaluate documents, plans, code, requirements, and specifications
Validation involves testing to ensure the software system meets the required functions and attributes

Involves manual or automated reviews of documents
Done during the initial phase of testing to catch defects early in STLC
Examines work documents and provides review comments
Work documents include requirement specifications, design document, source code, test plans, test cases, test scripts, help or user document, web page content

Involves executing code to check functional behavior, memory/cpu usage, and overall performance
Confirms that the software product works in conformance with business requirements
Can be black or white box testing and is performed at all levels of testing

Requirements Phase: Determine test strategy, adequacy of requirements, and generate functional test conditions
Design Phase: Determine consistency of design with requirements, adequacy of design, and generate structural and functional test conditions
Program (Build) Phase: Determine consistency with design, adequacy of implementation, and generate structural and functional test conditions for modules and units
Test Phase: Test application system
Installation Phase: Place tested system into production
Maintenance Phase: Modify and retest

Requirement gathering and analysis: Testing team starts Test Planning phase after requirements analysis is completed
Design: Testers come up with Test strategy and mention what to test, how to test
Implementation/Coding: Testing is done against requirements to ensure product meets needs addressed and gathered during requirements phase
Deployment: Customer to beta testing, and any changes or bugs are reported to engineering team
Maintenance: Modify and re-test

Walkthroughs, reviews, and inspections are techniques used to identify defects at each stage of the development and maintenance life cycle
Key documentation includes review logs, check sheets, test strategy and test plan, test cases and test scripts, test results log, and defect logs

Risk is an issue that can be avoided or mitigated
Types of risks include schedule risk, budget risk, programmatic risks, operational risks, technical risks, and testing risks
Risk analysis involves forming a risk analysis team, identifying risks, estimating the magnitude of risk, and selecting testing priorities
Risk reduction methods include contingency planning