Software Testing Life Cycle

Software Testing Life Cycle

Software Testing Life Cycle is subset of Software Development Life Cycle. Phases in SDLC/STLC differ from organization to organization as well as project to project. Software Testing is a critical activity in development cycle. Without conforming in the process of development, it leads to mishap and huge loss to any organization. Each and every product should go under quality check before going live to ensure that the product conforms to the quality.

Below are the critical phases in STLC;

  1. Requirements Elicitations
  2. Test Strategizing
  3. Test Case Development
  4. Test Case Execution
  5. Defect Logging  and Result Analysis
  6. Project Closure

    Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)
    Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)

All the phases have its entry and exit criteria, tasks and deliverables. In this tutorial we will see about STLC phases briefly.

  1. Requirements Elicitations

This phase addresses what are the customer expectations from the product. How the application should behavior under various circumstances. A crystal clear objective helps developer to create; test engineers to plan the strategy and testing techniques. Also, feasibility study helps test engineers to pick the right test cases to test, automate and for performance testing.

Entry Criteria

  • Statement Of Work (SoW) from the client

Activities

  • Understands the objectives
  • Feasibility study
  • Prepares Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM)
  • Prepared High Level Test Scenarios
  • Reviewing the business objective
  • Reviewing High Level Test Scenarios

Exit Criteria

  • Baselined Test Requirements document

 2.     Test Strategizing

This phase defines how to approach and achieve the objectives to meet business requirements. Preparation of test strategy is critical for the project success. Thru effective brainstorming technique with various stakeholders this can be achieved.

Entry Criteria

  • Baselined Test Requirements document

Activities

  • Test Strategy preparation
  • Define Service Level Agreement (SLA)
  • Create Test Scenarios
  • Identifying test data
  • Test coverage preparation
  • Review of test strategy and test scenarios
  • Define when to stop testing

Exit Criteria

  • Baselined Test Strategy document

3.     Test Case Development

This phase is very critical; following are the important activities that drive the whole project.

  1. Environment Set up
  2. Test case/script creation
  3. Test data identification and set up

Entry Criteria

  • Baselined Test Strategy document

Activities

  • Isolated environment set up
  • Identifying the test data
  • Create test cases for manual testing
  • Create test scripts for test automation
  • Revisit RTM
  • Review of test cases/scripts

Exit Criteria

  • Environment sign-off
  • Baselined Test Cases/Scripts

4.     Test Case Execution

Test engineers team is complete responsible to execute identified functional test cases and test scripts. This phase identifies defects by executing test cases/scripts. It validates whether the right product is being created.

Entry Criteria

  • Isolated and hassle free environment
  • Test Cases/script with test data
  • Test Automation tools for test automation

Activities

  • Execute test cases and validate
  • Update relevant trackers like RTM, Test Coverage etc.
  • Document the important screenshots and relevant output data
  • Metric Preparation and Analysis

Exit Criteria

  • Baselined test execution tracker

5.     Defect Logging and Result Analysis

This phase involves logging and tracking the defects identified during functional testing. If the actual output is not conforming to expected output then the defect should be logged with relevant info. Defect should be reproducible, this will help developers to analyze and fix it at the earliest.

Entry Criteria

  • Final execution report

Activities

  • Defect Logging
  • Defect tracking
  • Result preparation
  • Report generation

Exit Criteria

  • Signed-off Defect Tracker
  • Signed-off RTM and Test Coverage document

6.     Project Closure

This final phase defines the project closure and the indicator of the product can go live.

Entry Criteria

  • Signed-off final report

Activities

  • Documentation of all learning
  • Documentation of all knowledge artifacts related to domain and technical
  • Submission of project closure report to the clients

Exit Criteria

  • Submission of Project Closure document to the clients

About the Author

1 thought on “Software Testing Life Cycle”

  1. if i can get notes on writing test cases and how to write test documents that will be very useful and helpful …
    thank you sir

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Hamster - Launch JMeter Recent Test Plans SwiftlyDownload for free
+
Share via
Copy link