Software Testing - Software Testing Basics

The following are the important steps used to define a testing policy in general. But it can change according to your organization. Let's discuss in detail the steps of implementing a testing policy in an organization.

• Definition: The first step any organization needs to do is define one unique definition for testing within the organization so that everyone is of the same mindset.
• How to achieve: How are we going to achieve our objective? Is there going to be a testing committee, will there be compulsory test plans which need to be executed, etc?.
• Evaluate: After testing is implemented in a project how do we evaluate it? Are we going to derive metrics of defects per phase, per programmer, etc. Finally, it's important to let everyone know how testing has added value to the project?.
• Standards: Finally, what are the standards we want to achieve by testing? For instance, we can say that more than 20 defects per KLOC will be considered below standard and code review should be done for it.

In any project the acceptance document is normally prepared using the following inputs. This can vary from company to company and from project to project.

1. Requirement document: This document specifies what exactly is needed in the project from the customers perspective.
2. Input from customer: This can be discussions, informal talks, emails, etc.
3. Project plan: The project plan prepared by the project manager also serves as good input to finalize your acceptance test.

The following diagram shows the most common inputs used to prepare acceptance test plans.

Configuration management is the detailed recording and updating of information for hardware and software components. When we say components we not only mean source code. It can be tracking of changes for software documents such as requirement, design, test cases, etc.

When changes are done in adhoc and in an uncontrolled manner chaotic situations can arise and more defects injected. So whenever changes are done it should be done in a controlled fashion and with proper versioning. At any moment of time we should be able to revert back to the old version. The main intention of configuration management is to track our changes if we have issues with the current system. Configuration management is done using baselines.

While doing testing on the actual product, the code coverage testing tool is run simultaneously. While the testing is going on, the code coverage tool monitors the executed statements of the source code. When the final testing is completed we get a complete report of the pending statements and also get the coverage percentage.