A Quick Guide to Software Testing Life Cycle

The Software Testing Life Cycle, also named STLC, is a sequence of particular actions conducted during the testing process to ensure all the software quality objectives are met. STLC covers both Verification and Validation. It is a series of methodological activities that are necessary to perform to certify your software product.

In the Software Testing Life, each activity is performed in a systematic and planned way. Moreover, every phase of the STLC has different objectives and deliverables, or you can understand based on different organizations, there can be different phases introduced in STLC. Nonetheless, the basis will remain the same.

Below are the critical phases of STLC (Software Testing Life Cycle).

• Requirement Analysis
• Test Planning
• Test Case Development
• Test Environment Setup
• Test Execution
• Test Closure

Requirement Analysis

In the first step of the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC), the Outsourced Software Testing Company and its Quality Assurance teams understand the requirements that are needed to test. If anything is not understood or missing, then quality assurance teams collaborate with stakeholders to know the requirements in detail.

Activities Include:

• Discover types of tests to be performed.
• Collect details about testing focus and priorities.
• Build RTM (Requirement Traceability Matrix).
• Find out details of the test environment where the testing will take place.
• Analysis of automation feasibility (if required).

Deliverables Include:

• Requirement Traceability Matrix.
• Automation Feasibility report (If appropriate).

Test Planning

Another most efficient phase of STLC is Test Planning. In this phase, testing team managers prepare the plans for testing activities and estimate time, budget, and effort to get the testing work done. Make sure, collection of requirements is crucial before defining the test plans.

Activities Include:

• Preparation of test strategy/plan document for several types of testing.

• Choosing the best testing tool.

• Getting an estimation for test effort.

• Resource planning and assigning roles and responsibilities.

• Training requirement

Deliverables Include:

• A document containing test plans or strategies.
• Effort estimation document.

Test Case Development

After completing the test planning phase, the software testers team initiates the test case development phase, where their role is to note down the detailed test cases and prepare the necessary test data to conduct testing efficiently. Furthermore, the reviewing of test cases is done by the quality assurance team, and they can suggest any changes if required.

Activities Include:

• Create applicable test scripts and automation scripts.
• Evaluate & prioritize test cases and scripts.
• Take access to the test environment for test data creation.

Deliverables Include:

• Test cases/scripts.
• Test data.

Test Environment Setup

Test Environment decides the situations or conditions on which product/software is tested, and it is a vital part of STLC. One of the best things about the test environment setup is that it is treated as an independent activity and can be considered with the test case development. In this phase, there is no need to involve the testing team because the developer or any customer handles the major responsibility of this activity.

Activities Include:

Prepare a list for the Test Environment based on the requirement and list of hardware and software requirements.

• Configure test environment and test data.
• Perform smoke testing on the build.
• Deliverables Include:
• Set up Test Environment with Test Data.
• Smoke test results.

Test Execution

In this phase, testing teams start the execution of test cases after done the test case development and test environment setup. Moreover, the purpose of Test Execution is not only to help you execute the code but also to compare the expected and actual results. On the other hand, to execute the test well, you need to check some activities that are given below:

Activities Include:

• Implement tests according to plans.
• Record test results and log defects/bugs for failed cases.
• Map errors or defects to test cases in RTM.
• Conduct re-testing for the defect fixes.
• Track the issues to closure.

Deliverables Include:

• Finished RTM with the execution status.
• Prepare reports for defects.

6. Test Closure

Test Closure is the final phase/stage of STLC where one can analyze the process of testing.

Activities Include:

• Assess completion criteria of the cycle as per time, test coverage, critical business objectives, software, cost, and quality.

• Prepare test metrics as per the above parameters.

• Keep track of what you’ve learned throughout the project.

• Prepare test closure report.

• Report to the customer about its product and explain the quality in qualitative and quantitative terms.

• Analysis of test results to identify the defect distribution by kind and degree.

Deliverables Include:

• Test metrics.
• Test closure report.

Role of STLC

The role of STLC (Software Testing Life Cycle) is to help teams in

• Redefining the agile testing process

• Increasing consistency & effectiveness

• Clearly describing goals and expectations for every project

• Applying time restrictions to project testing

• Confirm that each function/feature is tested and passing before extra features are thoroughly added

• Assure those project requirements will meet.

In short, you can understand that it is a step-by-step procedure that one can follow to make sure about quality software. In the early stage of the Software Testing Life Cycle, mainly when developers develop the product, the tester takes the responsibility of analyzing and defining the scope of testing. Also, testers focus on the entry & exit criteria of tests and prepare some test cases to minimize the entire life cycle and pay attention to the quality.

Common Activities of STLC (Software Testing Lifecycle Framework) are as follow:

As discussed above, each phase of the STLC has some unique objectives and targets, which are achieved by testing teams simply following a list of common activities. Also, during the whole test process, they focus on three things: Test initiation, execution, and termination. Thus, to help you check the most common activities of STLC Framework, we have mentioned the information below:

• Analyze system requirements of clients and stakeholders
• Create a document or a traceability matrix to determine the completeness of the project and compare requirements with features
• identify test types and techniques for each feature.
• Prioritize the targeted features
• Analyze how it is feasible to automate tasks
• Discover information about the environment.

Benefits of STLC

STLC aims to complete your testing of software successfully and provides you various benefits that are as follow:

• Shifts left testing in the development cycle and ensure that the designing of test cases will be meaningful, and one should have clarity of feature specs.

• Ensures a faster testing process due to the systematic approach for testing and allows teams to detect and resolve bugs faster.

• Project progress tracking is easier because testing is performed well with phases and goals.

Difference Between STLC and SDLC

Importance of Outsourced Software Testing in STLC

Software Testing Outsourcing is a group of freelancers on independent software testing companies, or they can be part of third-party that perform the various sets of activities involved in STLC.

Moreover, these companies or competent vendors consider several types of testing from DevOps, Regression, Automation, Accessibility, Performance to UAT Testing, including Integration Testing with the latest trends of Software Testing, plus, several current technologies like Edge Computing, Robotic Process Automation, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Virtual Reality, and many more. Not only this but also, they focus on key focus areas and consider the STLC framework to get the testing done with time-saving capabilities.

Also, when choosing the combination of onshore and offshore teams in STLC, it becomes possible to ensure faster time-to-market and get the work done from teams in any time zone. Similarly, achieving the effectiveness for testing is also simple due to the ability to follow different phases in STLC such as Requirement Analysis, Test Planning, Test Case Development, Test Environment Setup, Test Execution, and Test Closure. Besides, the Outsourcing of Software Testing ensures that test cases will be optimized quicker, better, and easier to obtain quality results because the entire approach for testing is followed systematically.

Apart from this, various global practices, test strategies, methodologies., and tools are used to fulfill implicit and explicit requirements and make it feasible for business owners to meet digital transformation objectives with ease. Due to the numerous benefits of STLC thus, choosing the right outsourcing company is critical.

Conclusion

A sequence of specific actions or STLC is important during the testing process to ensure that testing is prioritized well by moving from one phase to another. With STLC, one can also get an overview of how the quality is attained for several tests and their cases.

Even you can assume which tests are needed to conduct for software quality and which tests are redundant or unnecessary and should not be done. Therefore, when meeting the software quality objectives, one can consider the Software Testing Life Cycle by including validation & verification processes.