#software product testing

Software products have become an integral part of driving the whole global digital ecosystem. They bring with them attributes like convenience, speed of operations, security, and privacy, among others. As customers became choosy with their preferences and the competition among providers got intense, quality became the core differentiator that helped an organization stay ahead of the competition. To ensure the delivery of superior-quality products from the build pipeline and pre-empt customers from facing any issues with their performance, the former should be subjected to rigorous software product testing. Over a period, quality assurance has come to be associated with standard processes, practices, and methodologies. These should be followed in letter and spirit to enhance quality, streamline workflows, improve efficiency, and be responsive to customer feedback. However, a few QA practices have become dated and should be updated with the new trends. To understand these better, let us discuss some dos and don’ts about software application testing.

The do’s of software product testing

Quality Assurance (QA) is a critical requirement in the product development lifecycle to identify and remove glitches. It helps to make a product competitive and allow it to meet the customer’s expectations. If QA is not part of the SDLC, the consequences for the entire value chain can be severe.

·       The product would be left with glitches thereby impacting its performance.

·       Hackers can exploit the inherent vulnerabilities to steal sensitive business and customer information.

·       Security protocols can go for a toss with the business inviting censure and penalties from regulators.

·       The brand suffers immensely as adverse publicity through word of mouth can go viral.

ü  Choose specific test cases for automation: Automation is the key when it comes to performing repetitive tests such as regression. However, care should be taken to choose the right test cases for automation as test complexities can render such testing infructuous. To automate everything is certainly not the way to go about in a software product testing strategy. There should be a proper selection criterion in place to choose a test case for automation. If done the right way, test automation can deliver benefits that far outweigh the costs.

ü  Upgrade skills for automation: Even though automation is a potent software product testing method, the skills required to execute the same is not always available. For any team going for test automation as part of the software product testing strategy, the QA team should be well-versed with any one of the programming languages such as Ruby, C#, JavaScript, or Python. Besides, the team members should have the expertise of handling automation test tools like Selenium. The bottom line is that more the testers have skills for automation, better will be the outcome of software product testing.

ü  Quicken the pace of testing: In a non-Agile test environment, testers are wont to leave some of their difficult tests at the end of the SDLC. However, this practice is flawed as testing the quality of applications at the end of the development process hinders delivery. Rather, the testing team should adopt a risk-based approach towards software product testing and execute the high priority cases first.

ü  Manage the testing environment: Testers seeking deployment no longer holds, for today, it is more about managing the test environment by configuring the CI tool or Selenium grid. There should be cloud, containers, and virtualization, and the ability to write appropriate test scripts.

ü  Shorter tests: The test suites should be made shorter to enable better and quicker detection of glitches. Not everything should be tested in a test scenario, for it would make troubleshooting difficult later.

ü  Follow shift-left: The QA team should align itself with the development team through shift-left testing. This way, they can make a better impact on the quality of software and deliver it faster through the value chain. Also, shift-left helps developers to quickly mitigate any glitches in the code and move to the next sprint.

The don’ts of software product testing

In addition to the above-mentioned ‘dos,’ testers should follow some don’ts as well to enhance the quality of testing and not leaving anything to chance.

·       Tracking defects in many places: Keep a single log of defective cases or glitches instead of documenting them in various places – excel sheets, tracking tools. A centralized repository for documenting glitches can help in their quicker tracking and better monitoring.

·       Focus on negative scenarios: Testers should not spend their energies on testing negative test scenarios that are less likely to be used by the end customers. Even though these should be tested during the test cycle, the priority should be set for scenarios that are most likely to be used by the end customers.

·       Avoid regression testing: Any change made to the application can impact specific areas of it unless regression testing is carried out. Often testers are of the view that regression testing can be avoided as the features or functionalities to be tested had been done earlier. However, any assumption in this regard can be fraught with danger as the changes can cause defects in other areas of the application.

·       Automate everything: This follows from the ‘dos’ mentioned above where only specific test cases should be automated. The testing team should leave some space for manual testing as automation does not lend itself to every possible scenario. For example, any wrong code in the test script can harm the testing exercise.

Conclusion

The software applications driving the modern digital ecosystem, in conjunction with the hardware systems, are dependent on various third-party applications and platforms. The omnichannel footprint of software means each module (and the interface between modules) needs to function smoothly to deliver the expected outcomes. This is ensured by conducting software integration testing.

One of the important characteristics of a software application are the seamless flow of information between its two ‘units’ or ‘modules’. However, the flow of information could be interrupted by the presence of glitches, which if not identified and corrected in time can make the application faulty. Thus, software integration testing helps to expose faults that lie at the interface between two integrated units. Once the individual units or modules are tested, the integration of interfaces gets validated.

To draw an an analogy to this type of testing, let us consider two groups of friends who have been invited to a party. To find out if they can get along, they should be subjected to an ‘integration test.’ This is done by bringing them to a single room and observe how they interact. In a similar vein, to check if each unit of software functions seamlessly, they need to be integrated and tested. Thus, integration testing, as part of the software testing services, checks if all unit’s function in harmony. It ensures if the modules developed by different developers are working towards a singular objective.

Various types of software integration testing

The various ways to test the integration of modules are as following:

Big Bang: As one of the most common ways to test the integration of software modules, the big bang involves smashing and testing all the units together. This may keep the tester in good stead if all the tests are completed or the software project is relatively small. However, it can have its cons as well. For example, in case a glitch is identified, it would be difficult for testers to figure out the right module or unit responsible for it. To find the erring module, testers have to detach a few of them and repeat the testing till they identify the glitch. Since this approach requires the modules to be ready before testing, it can extend the turnaround time for product release.

Incremental: Here, two or more logically aligned units are tested as part of a single batch. Thereafter, other similarly aligned units are checked eventually ensuring the interface of every single unit with another is validated. It combines both the bottom-up or top-down approaches.

Hybrid, Mixed, or Sandwich: This approach combines both bottom-up and top-down type of integration testing. Here, the top and lower modules are tested simultaneously for integration thereby deriving the best results. This approach can come in handy for large projects.

Best practices for integration testing

Since most software development processes are moving towards Agile or DevOps, it needs to be seen how integration testing can fit into a CI/CD environment. The software testing services for integration should have the following best practices.

Execute integration testing before unit testing: The waterfall model of software product testing has led us to believe that fixing a glitch later in the SDLC can be costly. This is due to the fact that one doesn’t move to the next stage until the completion of the present phase. This approach, however, can be turned on its head in an Agile environment. This is because Agile offers the flexibility to change the business logic in an SDLC.

Do not confuse unit testing with integration testing: Unit testing targets the basic code and needs to be run frequently to detect bugs. On the other hand, integration testing is much more time consuming and should not be part of every build cycle. However, it may be included in the daily build.

Extensive logging of processes: Identifying and mitigating bugs in a unit test is easy. However, given the scope and complexity of integration tests spanning a number of modules, doing the same is difficult. The need is to keep a record of processes to better analyze the reasons for failure.

Conclusion

Integration testing may be expensive and time-consuming but is essential to deliver quality products in the DevOps and Agile-driven environments.

The revolution in software development based on newer technologies has brought into sharp focus the importance of software product testing. To address the present day challenge of staying in competition by achieving customer satisfaction, the software product testing process has undergone a flurry of changes.

These changes have led to the shortening of the product lifecycle and validation of its quality in terms of functionality, performance, and security. So, what was earlier the traditional waterfall testing method, has given way to automation in the form of Agile and DevOps. The focus, therefore, is not on testing the product after its development but embracing shift left testing. According to this model, testing and integration are part of the early development cycle as opposed to the traditional approach.

Let us find out the latest trends in software product testing strategy and know how they help to keep all the stakeholders happy and contended – developers, testers, management, and customers.

#1 QA to Quality Engineering: If the traditional Quality Awareness process is about testing a product in the post development phase in a step by step manner (read waterfall,) the manual approach leaves a lot to be desired. Moreover, the changing market dynamics and user preferences have necessitated the quick delivery of quality products. To address this challenge, the traditional testing model has been found to be wholly inadequate due to the following reasons.

Step by step manual process is lengthy, error prone, and time consuming.

The process entails the previous steps to be fully completed before the new step could begin. This slows down the testing process considerably.

Since manual testing of numerous variables and dependencies is time consuming, not to speak of inducing fatigue, the manual testers often reduce the testing area.

The low attention span of manual testers means a lot of hidden glitches are left untouched. These glitches impact the quality of software leading to customer dissatisfaction.

Customer dissatisfaction affects the brand image of the company besides inviting lawsuits and regulatory censure.

To prevent the inadequacies associated with the waterfall model of QA, the model of Quality Engineering is used. The aim of the latter model is to prevent errors from creeping into the software. This is ensured by introducing test automation during the development stage instead of testing a product just before the delivery phase.

#2 Agile and DevOps: The shift towards Quality Engineering follows Agile and DevOps methodologies. According to these, the SDLC entails the development and testing teams to work simultaneously in sprints. So, if a module is written, it is sent to the testing team immediately. And if the testing team finds any error in the module the same is sent back for correction. This way, each module is first tested as part of the development sprint followed by its integration. The Agile method uses test automation in a big way and turns the software product testing services iterative, quick, and seamless.

However, with the delivery of a rich customer experience becoming the sole objective of business, the Development and Testing teams are combined with the Operations team as part of the DevOps model. This model aims at carrying out continuous testing and integration to make the product glitch free and updated with the latest trends and versions. DevOps ensures a software application has a proper interface with various devices, screen resolutions, platforms, frameworks, and networks. Besides validating software functional testing, DevOps secures a software against cyber threats from malware, trojans, ransomware, and viruses as well.

#3 Big Data Testing: With applications becoming more complex due to their interfacing with a range of devices, networks, frameworks, etc., a lot of data (in terabytes) gets generated. This humongous amount of data needs to be tested thoroughly by using sophisticated tools, analytics, methodologies, and frameworks.

#4 Internet of Things (IoT): The use of embedded software in devices in the form of sensors, actuators, etc., has necessitated the need for software application testing. The IoT testing should validate the functionality, performance, and security of the embedded software. This is of prime importance to ensure the successful functioning of the device in accordance with the test outcomes.

#5 Open source tools: The rising cost of test automation has turned the focus of using open source test automation tools (read free) such as Selenium. The built-in flexibility for customization and other benefits have made these tools highly sought after ones by the testers.

Conclusion

The growing digitization initiatives taken by individuals, groups, businesses, organizations and governments have turned the world into a global village. Internet usage has facilitated a seamless flow of information and has benefited arguably every conceivable sector of human activity. Just a click on a search engine and the specific information pops up for the user. Information technology has not only helped traditional businesses to improve productivity, reduce redundancies/rework, and enhance efficiency and quality, but has spawned a host of new businesses as well. The growth of digital or mobile companies with a digital interface such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple amongst others bear testimony to the phenomenon of digitization.

Information Technology has created new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) or Cloud Computing to help human activity. So far so good! However, everything is not hunky dory as it may appear, for there is a flipside to the whole internet revolution as well. This is related to the rising threat of cybercrime where unscrupulous individuals, groups, organizations and even governments manipulate the digital ecosystem to carry out their nefarious agenda. 

Impact of cyber crime

Higher incidences of cybercrime have made many people wary of the internet or use a software connected to it. The growing threat of viruses, trojans, malware, ransomware, phishing, and hacking means software quality assurance is no longer a fancy idea to be discussed in seminars, but get it implemented effectively. The very fact that web or mobile applications carry sensitive individual or business information is a reason enough for cyber criminals to target them.

According to industry estimates, cybercrime costs the global economy up to $500 billion a year and has been projected to touch a whopping $2 trillion by the year 2019 (Source: Forbes.) Furthermore, cybercrime encompasses a large canvas that is not limited to defrauding individuals or businesses with money or information alone, but even more sinister. A huge number of software with an interface to the internet seem to have become a leaking sieve. The sieve is harnessed by criminals of all hues such as terrorists, drug cartels, human traffickers and more. They use the unsecured digital ecosystem to launder money and carry out their vicious agenda. With unsecured software becoming an easy target for cyber criminals, companies are at a greater risk of losing the trust of customers, brand value, and revenue.

Regulatory agencies

To strengthen cyber security and to ensure greater compliance, there exists a host of security mandates such as GDPR, FDIC, GLBA, HIPAA, HITECH, NCUA, OCC and PCI DSS. Companies should maintain an extra vigil to meet the regulations or face severe censure or penalties in case there is a security breach. In fact, according to the GDPR provisions effective from May 25, 2018, an organization has to cough up 20 million Euros or 4% of its annual revenue, whichever is higher in case sensitive customer information is leaked. No wonder the impact of such steep penalties can make a company go out of business. Thus, more the reason why software quality assurance should be made an integral part of the SDLC or implemented in a company where IT services run the show.

What is software quality assurance?

The process involves a set of activities to ensure the quality of a software through auditing, testing, and training. The auditing and testing activities are all about identifying the vulnerabilities in a software or its interface with the hardware or network. The training is about sensitising the people to follow cyber security protocols. Once the vulnerabilities/glitches/bugs are identified, the same are worked upon to enhance the quality of software on a continuous basis. The process of software product testing involves various types of testing such as functional, usability, performance, integration, security etc.

How can software product testing help?

Quality validation: When users buy a software they put an intrinsic faith in its quality. The quality can be related to aspects such as the software’s functionality, usability, performance and most importantly, security. If the software happens to use sensitive customer information such as card details, it is all the more important that the software comes with an assurance of quality. This is where software application testing can help in validating the quality of software as per the above mentioned parameters.

Secures the software against vulnerabilities: An unsecured software can be a recipe for inviting hackers or cyber criminals. Hence, any software product testing strategy should identify the glitches and plug them against intrusive vectors such as malware, viruses, trojans, bots etc.

Builds a quality culture: A quality assurance process, besides validating the software for quality, creates a quality culture where everyone in the organization becomes responsible to ensure the quality of software during the entire SDLC and beyond.

Improves ROI: The software product testing method can throw up inadequacies in the development, operation and delivery processes of a company. The QA process identifies the metrics that every code and by consequence, function or process of a company should adhere to. Thus, knowing the areas of improvement, the stakeholders can work towards streamlining the processes and functions of the company. This can help in improving productivity, reducing waste, and enhancing the delivery mechanism – all leading to a better user experience. When customers are assured of the quality of software and are reasonably satisfied with the quick feedback mechanism, the business benefits.

Conclusion

The threat of cyber security and its dire consequences have forced businesses to adopt quality assurance of their products and services. It is only by following robust QA strategies that businesses can build trust about the software and comply with the mandates of the regulatory bodies.

The growing competition, especially in the digital world, has meant that businesses are looking at strategies to not only beat the competition blues, but also secure their ROI as well. The evolving business strategies are forcing companies to adopt new technologies and generate quality software applications to bring about business transformation. This is especially done in the domains of social media, mobility, cloud computing, big data analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT).

However, parallel to the growth in the number of innovative software products and the volume of data, there is a growing cybersecurity threat as well. The bad news is that the threat is ever growing and is causing severe disruptions and financial losses to individuals, businesses, institutions and governments. Hence, to meet the growing challenge, businesses need to invest more in carrying out software product testing.

What is a cybersecurity threat?

As the world gets increasingly interconnected through the internet, there are individuals, groups, organizations and even governments trying to exploit the vulnerabilities of the systems, networks and applications. The cyber criminals are literally prowling the internet to target vulnerable systems. They do so to carry out espionage, money laundering, fund terror and narcotics trade, get monetary gains or seek revenge. These threats come in the form of viruses, ransomware, botnets, malware, and trojans that can wreak havoc on the systems, networks and applications.

Impact of cybersecurity threats

Financial loss: The cyber criminals are known for maliciously draining funds from the bank accounts of individuals, groups, and organizations. These funds run into billions of dollars. According to a study, the economic cost of cybercrime has risen to 0.8% of the global GDP or $600 billion a year (Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/252435439/Economic-impact-of-cyber-crime-is-significant-and-rising). Moreover, given the scale of under reporting of cybercrimes, the above figure is quite conservative. A major segment of the financial losses is attributed to the theft of intellectual property and confidential business information. Besides, financial loss can take place from denial or disruption of services as well. For example, the recent cases of ransomware attacks had caused severe disruption of services leading to a huge financial cost for the individuals and entities.

Loss of brand equity: Inadequate cyber security can result in criminals taking away confidential personal and business information held by entities such as banks, ecommerce firms, even individual accounts, and so on. When the customers of such entities end up facing financial losses, their implicit trust gets irretrievably broken. This leads to the loss of brand equity, a loss more severe than financial loss.

Costly legal suits: An inevitable consequence of personal data or money being siphoned off from companies is the filing of legal suits. Resultantly, the company targeted by cyber criminals can end up paying substantial sums of money as compensation. This can even lead to financial losses.

Falling foul of regulatory bodies: If companies are lax in implementing mandatory security protocols (exploited to the hilt by cyber criminals), they can face severe strictures and penalties.

Growing awareness about cybersecurity threats

Even though a lot of ground needs to be covered by the companies to secure themselves against cybersecurity threats, there is a growing awareness as well. According to a Gartner forecast, enterprises are likely to spend around $96.3 on cyber security in 2018 (Source: https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3836563)

Improving product security

The growing threat of cybersecurity and its dire implications signifies that it is no longer about merely reacting to the security breaches. The crying need is to strengthen the security defences of networks, systems, web and mobile applications. This intensifies the need for comprehensive software product testing services to validate software products. In addition to executing software application testing, there is a greater need to educate the users about such products.

No matter how strong the security architecture is, it can be easily broken into by the cyber criminals. This can be done by manipulating the users through social engineering, wherein individuals inadvertently end up giving their login/password details.

As businesses have become more aware of securing their assets — systems and networks, cyber criminals have started to target the applications. According to a Gartner report, around 80% of cyber attacks are at the application level. Hence, securing access to enterprise applications become the business imperative.

Areas of focus for software product testing

To identify and eliminate the vulnerabilities in the product (application) that can provide access to an unauthorised person/device

Incorporate or strengthen the security features such as encryption of data and authentication. Establish security protocols that involve the conduct of periodic or sudden audits

Keep the security firewalls updated to monitor any new cyber-attack attempts

Software product testing methods

Product access: By incorporating ‘roles and rights management’, the access to a software product can be tested through authentication and authorization. Some of the software product testing methods to form a part of this segment are password test, default login, test for logout, password change, recovery, security question and Captcha.

Protection of data: Again, going by the ‘roles and rights management’ the type of data to be accessed by a person should be established. For example, the person at the enquiry should not be able to view the encrypted passwords or sensitive product data.

Static application security testing (SAST) or white box testing: Through automation, a SAST model identifies the vulnerabilities an application can possess while dealing with users or data. The vulnerabilities could be in the form of SQL injection and Cross site scripting (XSS).

Conclusion

Software product testing is one of the most important processes that help validating the developed software to avoid discrepancies in future. Product testing companies help reduce unwanted expenses by helping the client concentrate more on their core business and product development. The best product testing companies provide efficient testing and validation services to their clients, which allow them to confidently release the product in the market.

There are different methods of software testing and they are listed below.

·         Manual and Automation Testing

·         Security and Performance Testing

·         Regression, Configuration and Functionality Testing

·         Test Automation

·         Compatibility and Globalization Testing

Who are product testing companies?

Many companies provide software product testing as one of their important services as it helps avoid production loss. They have a very good and knowledgeable team of software testers who do a clean validation of the product.

What do product testing companies do?

Software testing is a very detailed process and involves plenty of quality constraints at each level of checking. These companies provide end-to-end support making sure the parameters like functionality, applicability, scalability and security works fine.

Why should one choose the experienced software testing company?

The     efforts and the skills of an experienced software testing company are     focused only on the testing methodologies, training and talents on diverse     subjects.

The     testing methodology of experienced companies are uncommon (different from     other companies) and those methods are assessed, planned and implemented     on the testing products.

The     well-developed companies will have real-time experience with the complete     spectrum of software testing and thus the company is familiar with the     widest variety of projects, techniques used and the environment.

Benefits of outsourcing testing to companies:

The major benefits of employing these companies are:

Manpower: Better use of your internal resources i.e. your employees can concentrate on other critical aspect of your software or product

Cost stability and Risk reduction: Testing helps improve the quality of the product by fine-tuning its performance and also the maintenance cost will be reduced.

ROI perk up: Since the risks are reduced during testing, it automatically reduces the investment and increases the return on investment (ROI).

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