Showing posts with label qa and software testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label qa and software testing. Show all posts

16 January, 2014

Crowdsourced Software Testing – 2 Approaches

Each enterprise finds it a daunting challenge to implement the software testing strategy effectively. In addition to being labor-intensive, software QA processes further require efficient collaboration between software developers, testers and users. So a constant increase is noted in the number of companies adopting crowdsourced testing solutions. The innovative form of software testing enables organizations to avail the combined advantages of crowdsourcing and Cloud computing. Unlike conventional software QA methods, crowdsourced testing can be performed by community of external expert QA engineers working from different location.

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The organization is, thus, not required to hire any experienced testers and consultants to test the application in a realistic environment. However, each enterprise has several options to access to the crowd. In addition to using a self-service model to access the crowd, an organization can consider availing crowdsourced testing solutions through managed service provides. Also, a company can avail both self-serviced and managed crowdsourced testing solutions. It is always important for an organization to choose the crowdsourced testing solutions according to the nature and significance of a specific task.

Two Distinct Approaches to Crowdsourced Software Testing

Self-Service Crowdsourced Testing Solutions

As the name indicates under this approach, an organization has to set up the test, manage the project and evaluate the requirements internally. The organization has to deploy external testers to evaluate the application under real-world conditions during the development phase. Some enterprise level companies even get the QA done through their existing customer base. As the testers work from different locations, documentation is essential to ensure adequate test coverage. At the same time, the organization also needs to make the issues traceable and reproducible. Once the application is evaluated by the participating testers, the test results needs to be integrated and analyzed by the internal team.

That is why; the resource requirements will vary according to the size and nature of individual processes. However, each company has to consider several factors before adopting the self-service model. Along with evaluating various aspects of the project in detail, it also needs to decide the resources required by the setup. Also, it must have adequate manpower to manage the testing project internally based on the documentation provided by the crowd. The enterprise further has to deploy an in-house team to setup and manage the software QA projects effectively. On the whole, an organization must have to capacity to setup an internal environment to get the software tested by through self-service crowdsourced testing solutions.

Managed Crowdsourced Testing Solutions

The concept of managed crowdsourced testing is similar to that of project outsourcing. Most companies opt for managed crowdsourced software testing solution to save time, money and efforts. Each organization also has option to choose from several crowdsourced testing solution providers. But the managed crowdsourced testing solutions are more expensive in comparison to the self-service method. Also, the enterprise has to avail managed solutions from the right company by keeping in mind the specific details of the project. At the same time, the company also needs to decide if its budget allows it to avail managed crowdsourced testing solutions from a reputable firm.

While availing managed crowdsourced testing solution, an enterprise must define how to document each test. Each external tester must provide screenshots, screencasts and written documents to make the issues reproducible. It is always a good idea to avail managed solution for large and complex projects to save both time and money. Also, the managed services must be integrated seamlessly with the internal processes to avail benefits in the longer run. However, each company can avail managed services initially to check if crowdsourced testing works for it.

An organization can always consider combining both self-service and managed crowdsourced testing solution to avail better results. At the same time, it must compare the cost and efforts required to test a software application under these approached to take the right decision.

You can hire testers from top web application testing companies in India who can help you accomplish testing within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide software testing services. If you would like to hire software testers experts from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.

11 December, 2013

Agile Performance Testing Life Cycle

In a software development life-cycle, performance testing is a vital activity. Application performance in terms of initial planning along with overall application performance and production analysis drives the development of better software releases as well as iterations. In all iterations of software development process, application programmers, testers and stakeholders must make performance a major consideration in every iteration. Here you can get a closer understanding of how performance testing can be integrated into your Agile process.

The Key Activities Involved in Agile Processes

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The best practices relating to performance testing involve various primary issues. Throughout the past two decades, business application devices have experienced significant evolution from monolithic mainframe systems to composite as well as distributed systems. Development life-cycle process is presently measured in weeks or even days as opposed to years. These changes to the development methodology or technology increase the pressure on test engineers to finish or plan performance testing. Besides the evaluation of new systems or issues of legacy application, implementation continue to have impact on test engineers.

Issues Associated with Traditional Agile Testing

At the environment testing core, there is the art of analyzing how the application responds after imitating the real user activity or behavior. With brand new testing systems, test engineers are forced to make a deliberate guess about the users' behavior based on requirements as well as use-cases. With brand new systems, the test engineer is forced to make a calculated guess about the behavior of users based on use-cases and requirements.

The essential performance related issue reliably uses data from a constricted non-production environment to predict precisely the implementation ability of the system in a rather robust environment. Test engineers generally do their best in order to attempt or extrapolate for identification of system presentation, but often gain constricted success forecasting environment.

An Agile Environment Approach

With growing business needs as well as technology advancement, enterprises continue to work on producing highly developed software in less time. To realize this goal, a number of organizations have started adopting Agile methodological analysis. This approach helps in accelerating time to market, improving the quality of software, enhancing productivity and alignment between several business purposes and the technology innovations.

Agile methodology has tremendous momentum as it has been on the rise over the past few years. Software development breaks through the barriers of conventional waterfall model to Agile development to render better value much faster in order to improve the return on investment (ROI). An Agile environment puts several teams to work and develop the specialized, iterative as well as incremental product. This methodology promotes appropriate reviews, close teamwork, self-organization and more iterations. This approach also facilitates rapid delivery of high quality software and thus enables an industrial practice that aligns software development with company goals along with customer needs.

Agile Performance Testing

Performance evaluation which generally takes place in a waterfall model at the end of the life-cycle moves to the beginning in an Agile process that includes the designing as well as analysis. An application performance is directly proportional to its design. Hence, at the early stage of the life-cycle development it should be addressed. Throughout the Agile process, performance testing is considered from the release planning stage onwards.

In this developing business scenario, with the existing system, advent and demand of new products, the switch to the agile development technique is taking place from standard convention techniques. With the application of new or latest technology, more and more improved software are being developed. The performance of the products mostly depends on the specification and design of the product that can change at any point of time. Hence, this latest version of software should always be updated and monitored well for better functionality and adequate level of user satisfaction.

You can hire software testing companies from India who can help you accomplish testing within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide QA software testing services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our certified software testers, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.

09 November, 2013

What is the Best Test Case Design Method in Software Testing?

There are multiple test case design methods that are implemented and used by the software testing companies all over. The two most important ones are the Equivalence Class Partitioning and the Boundary Value Analysis. The methods imply that the evaluation case design managers must elaborate the required set of test cases. It has to be remembered in this respect that the conventional methods are not always used during the course of website testing and mobile application testing. However, prior to looking into the other methods and analyzing as to which one is suitable, let us delve a little deeper into understanding why sample evaluations are important and what is the procedure of writing the effective ones.

What are Test Cases?

Software quality assurance servicesSample tests basically include components that elaborate on inputs, actions, events or an anticipated response. The components are meant to find out if the features of the application are working in the right manner. Now, the primary objective of writing the sample tests is to approve the testing coverage of the particular application. These are written down for the purpose of bringing certain standardization while also minimizing the solution- centered approach in testing. The stipulated standards are strictly adhered to by those working in the CMMI QA testing services companies.

Procedure of Writing Test Cases

Writing test cases is a matter of much skill as well as expertise. Various things have to be kept in mind and these include the test case id, the unit that has to be tested or verified, the assumptions, if any, the steps to be executed along with the expected results.

For any application, a variety of test cases need to be included such as negative, boundary and functional test cases. Simplicity is the most important thing when it comes to writing these validation cases.

The Cause-Effect Graphing Method

As already mentioned, the traditional methods are often not used for mobile application testing or website testing. It is here that the Cause Effect Graphing Method comes to play. The method was proposed by Bill Elmendorf. He formulated the question of why the evaluations were needed by making use of the related software. The software elaborates on the required set of test cases that facilitates the entire functionality of the system. The very same procedures that are implemented in hardware logic circuit, are utilized by the cause-effect graphing method too.

The method paves the way for finding both kinds of faults, one that cancels the other as well as those that are made invisible by the other right things. Requirement document is what is most important in the initial stages of this particular procedure of evaluation. The method implies that every input in the requirement is a condition, which can be true or false.

Quality of Software Testing

Any kind of software evaluation, done by means of the different methods as well as techniques, is meant to ensure the quality of the software. Considering the importance of quality testing, it is essential to look into the ways that lead to the development of quality software.
  • To begin with, the developers should be entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating the quality. The lesser involvement of the developers often call for issues arising in the code and these issues are often quite difficult to fix as well.
  • Engaging the users is one effective way of allowing an impressive flow of code from the developer to the user base. Users get the chance to provide feedback on the software and hence, steer further developments in future. Quick response to the feedback is equally important.
Software testing has an importance of its own and there is no possible way in which this task can be eliminated. The importance of the test engineers is increasingly realized by one and all. Alongside, a software test strategy also needs to be created while this should necessarily include the automated, exploratory and manual evaluations that are particularly helpful in reducing risks.

We provide software quality assurance services. If you would like to hire software test professionals from us or would just like to speak to one of our expert software testers, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.