Role of Software Testing tools to build an effective QA strategy

QA Strategy

A research conducted to determine the root cause of software product failures found out poor quality assurance strategy to be a major reason behind it. The defects creep in during the software development process, and even with the best manual testing process, they often reappear.

The solution to providing high-quality software faster lies in implementing effective QA management using software testing tools and methodologies to build a bug-free end-product. This includes quality assurance, quality controls and testing.

The Importance of Software Testing Tools

Test Automation remains the best way to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of software testing and to deliver quality software faster. A successful realization of test automation requires good software testing tools. Using these tools, it is possible to validate the suitability of software functions as per requirements using scripted sequences before releasing it into production.

Automated checks can be applied to a wide array of test cases, like unit, regression and API testing. The best thing about automated software testing is the possibility of simplifying the manual effort into a set of scripts. For instance, if a large share of resources of the quality assurance team is used up by unit testing, then this process needs to be evaluated using automated testing. Automated testing consists of conducting tests, write up outcomes, and do a comparison of results with previous test runs.

Automated tests can perform repeatedly all through the day. This approach runs well with continuous testing and with software development practices consisting of continuous integration and continuous delivery and helping to change codes without gates automatically in production.

The use of software testing tools can greatly improve the efficiency of QA team. Other benefits with automated testing include higher accuracy, better coverage, capabilities, bug detection, improved resource efficiency, and reusability.

When a system is checked manually, there are possibilities of making mistakes, especially when the software tester needs to check hundreds or more lines of code. With automation testing of an application, it is possible to avoid these mistakes from occurring and conduct checks much faster than that done manually. 

There are some software testing tools that can log each test script and keep the user updated about the status of the test. This helps the tester to do a comparison of the received results and other reports to evaluate how well the software performs as per expectations and requirements.

Automated testing also helps staff to avoid conducting manual tests and focus more on other priorities of the project. The automated test scripts could be reused by the QA team to ensure similar execution of each check every time. Moreover, it is possible to find errors quickly in the initial stages of development and helping to cut down on overall working hours.

The Frameworks

Implementing automated testing requires the use of a framework, and includes testing tools, common practices and standards. The usual frameworks are as follows:

·         With data-driven frameworks, software testers can make scripts that work for wider quality checks for multiple data sets using fewer tests in comparison with modular options.

·         In the modular testing frameworks, small and independent scripts are made as part of testing to cut down redundancy. The downside of this process is that it takes a considerable time to set up.

·         As linear scripting framework makes it possible to use test script without much of planning, this type of automation framework is ideal for small applications. However, this framework does not help reusable scripts.

·         Keyword-driven testing frameworks make use of table formats to specify keywords for every function and execution methods. This type of testing framework can be used even by software testers without much knowledge in programming as the keywords could be used to create test scripts.

·         In hybrid type of framework, two or more practices are used together to get the benefits of both frameworks.

Open source test software testing tools that are known to deal best with the challenges in automation include Selenium, Cypress, and Robotium.

·         Selenium: Selenium is a widely popular software tool for test automation and is the industry standard for testing UI of web applications. Using Selenium, it is possible to automate and conduct test parameters in multiple programming languages like C#, Python, and Java and in various web browsers.

·         Cypress: The software tool covers unit tests and end-to-end integration and makes it possible to access distributed object models within the browser itself and also provide further tests for the debugger.

·         Robotium: With Robotium, it is possible for testers to write automatic user acceptance, system tests and functions for various Android devices.

Conclusion

The list of Software Testing tools is not exhaustive but includes the best tools that are popular and mature to address the challenges of organizations to deliver quality software faster. When selecting testing tools, make sure that they not only meet the current needs, but are also flexible and scalable for the potential trends and improvements.

Diya works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world’s first Independent Quality Engineering & Software Testing Services to be appraised at CMMI-SVC v1.3, Maturity Level 5, and is also ISO 9001:2015 & ISO 27001:2013 certified.