Quality: The Basics and Best Practices of Software Testing

What are the main guidelines in software testing?

You will draft an action plan for the implementation of good testing practices within your organization.

What are the different phases of testing?

• Understand them to better execute them.
• Function, class, inter-function, design pattern, component, module, API, micro-service, inter-application, interface, functionality, non-functional aspects, requirements, business processes, business needs.
• Test strategy VS integration strategy
• ISO/IEC 25010 or SQuaRE
• Alpha and beta testing.
• Acceptance criteria.

Concept of the "V" test

• Optimize your tests by associating each test phase with a portion of the development.
• Static and dynamic testing to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
• Shift-left testing and other quality control techniques during the software product life cycle.
• Plan your testing activities at each stage of development.
• Review applicable test activities and checklist to help you select them.

What are the processes and documentation for software testing?

• Whether manual or automated, the testing process activities always go through the same major steps; planning, design, execution, observation and correction.
• What are the test items for each of the steps? :
• Test strategy versus test plan
• Test procedures, scenario and test cases
• Test schedule
• Test log and progress report
• Test report and metrics
• Anomaly management and follow-up of corrections
• Corrective actions and continuous improvement process
• What are the test activities for each stage?

How to organize a test team

• What are the roles and responsibilities of the test team members?
• What are the qualities of a good tester?
• What is the minimum knowledge of a test analyst?
• Change request management.
• Configuration management.
• Market-recognized certifications.

Software test planning

• Presentation of a simple approach to build a test plan.
• How to calculate the test effort?
• Recommendations for building a test plan.
• Recommendations to apply when executing the test plan.

What are the tactics, techniques, methods, testing tools and automation to implement?

• Presentation of a decision tree to help you choose the right type of test.
• How to distinguish between a "black box" test and a "white box" test?
• Presentation of some functional testing techniques.
• Presentation of some structural testing techniques.
• Do we choose a dynamic or static method for this test?
• Do we choose a manual or automatic approach for this test?
• What is a good test coverage?
• When to use automated testing tools?
• Some rules about automation.
• Some examples of automated tools.

Designing test cases

• What are the characteristics of a good test case?
• What should we test?
• How do we find the test cases and scenarios?
• What input data should we use?
• Presentation of a simple approach to answer these questions.

Software test traceability

• What are the principles of traceability?
• Example of a traceability matrix.
• What are the objectives and usefulness of the traceability matrix?
• Some examples of tools on the market.
• How to implement traceability?

Test metrics

• When are the tests completed?
• Why have test metrics?
• Some examples of metrics.
• Method of targeting tests
• Most common errors and conclusion.