Good Testing Is Not Easy And Needs To Be Done Early

March 15, 2021

The process of analyzing a system and its components to check for its quality and productivity is vital for every software company. And this process, called software testing, must be initiated early in the software development life cycle. This helps to capture and eliminate defects within the early stages of SDLC i.e. demand gathering and style phases. An early start to testing helps to cut back the number of defects and ultimately the work on price within the finish.

Why early testing is important?

Usually, the Program Management Team appoints a Program Manager (PM) for a given software system release or a Project. The PM unitedly with all the stakeholders as well as selling, Development, QA, and Support groups decide a release schedule. Most of the organizations still abide by the normal Time-Based Release (TBR) models wherever the code or Product releases square measure planned for quarterly or half-yearly or yearly delivery. The waterfall model is predominantly employed for the execution of such code releases. In some cases for a shorter release cycle, the Agile/Scrum model is adopted.

  • Mainly, throughout Testing, it's expected that critical or high severity defects be known and logged by Testers. Developers got to fix those defects. Subsequently, testers got to verify the fixes.
  • Secondly, it's widely acknowledged by various product and package Engineering organizations that fixing and confirming high severity or important bugs at a sizable amount is time-consuming, resource-hogging (human + machine), and prone to collateral. Fixing important bugs principally bit an oversized part of the code as well as the intersection areas.
  • Lastly, if a large variety of the important bugs area unit is found throughout the top of a given release, then one or a lot of the subsequent negative developments crop up.
    • High likelihood of Testing cycle being extended.
    • High likelihood of unleash point being incomprehensible.
    • A particular feature having an oversized variety of defects might all at once get forced out from that individual release.
    • Customer commitments being incomprehensible.

    Any or all of the above circumstances can harm the Organization’s business. So it is no doubt that adopting ‘Early testing’ as a separate Test activity is going to be useful for the general management of SDLC for a given Project or software release.

    Overall Approach To Testing Early

    Undertaking an example of releasing a software or project X having three High Priority options A, B, and C, ten Medium priority options, and fifteen Minor (or Low priority) options.

  • High Priority options area unit generates high revenue and/or standards compliance and/or competition catch-up and/or competition practice and every one of those.
  • High priority options sometimes involve some complicated secret writing, an outsized range of recent lines of code extra.
  • A large range of recent lines of code can also mean a high likelihood of intersection areas.
  • Usually, High Priority options and/or options that have an outsized range of recent lines of code area unit best candidates for Testing Early.
  • There needn't be a separate testing strategy developed for the early testing activity.
  • QA Leads or Testers at the side of the event Leads or SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) ought to discuss and agree upon the Code/Testing coverage for this testing activity.
  • Recognizing acceptable High priority test cases and even some Medium priority test cases if one thinks that it's necessary from each of the featured testing Plans A, B, and C.
  • Once the acceptable options and subset of test cases are known, checking that they're being tracked with the organization’s test tracking tool.
  • Collaboration is the key solution. Throughout the Early test activity, the development and QA groups have to be compelled to collaborate closely so that the target objectives are achieved with quality outputs.

    • How early testing affects an entire project?

    The developer ought to test the software throughout the development life cycle of the project, however, the later one discovers a bug, the higher is going to be the price of its fixing. Even important changes created within the early stages of the project won’t cause sizable budget changes. It’s less expensive to vary the product at the starting of the event lifecycle than at the ultimate stages of the project. Early testing can facilitate the mending of the test cases later if changes are necessary. Early preparation of check setting, thereby will prevent any delays and unknown risks can have enough time to cope with.

    Many times testing teams do not get enough time to check the software system application. So they cut-short testing time that affects the overall standard of the software. Thus one solution is to begin checking early thus test team can get enough time to check software system applications. Therefore they need not squeeze their testing time.

    Conclusion

    Buyers or end-users purchase or adopt a system or solution. Substantiating a code that's running on such a system or product for its usefulness is that the primary demand. Adoption of Early Testing as associate integral activity of the general Testing Schedule for any given code Project or software release vastly motivates the Organization to deliver a strong qualified Product or a System.