Best Practices for Testing Process

By,
Poorna Muthukumar

Author: Poorna Muthukumar
Date Written: 01/03/08
Declaration:
I hereby declare that this document is based on my personal
experiences and the experience of the project members in my project.
To the best of my/our knowledge, this document does not contain any
material that infringes the copyrights of any other individual or
organization including the customers of Infosys.
Poorna Muthukumar
Project Details:
Project involved : AMXCAS3V
H/W Platform: Mainframe, Desktop PCs
S/W Environment: Web based application, JCL, DB2, Mercury Quality
Center
Appln. Type: Web based application
Project Type : Maintenance and Production support project
Target readers: All testers
Keywords: Test Plan, Test case, Checklist, QC (Quality Center)

Introduction
Test Plan
Test cases writing
Test execution
Checklists

Session Objectives
Introduction
Introduction contd..
Properly planned and managed testing is an essential
activity in building quality software systems
A tester should have the skilled knowledge, dedication
and right attitude
Role of the tester is crucial in producing stable and
reliable software
A good tester is absolutely obsessed with destroying the
software that we are testing. Testers should look at the
type of errors that are being discovered and should learn
how the developers think, and design more tests to stress
the system to the limit
Best Practices will make the
work easier and perfect
Test Plan
Test Plan contd..
Test planning plays a major role in the testing process.
The Test Planning process should begin at the beginning
of the project, once the project requirements are being
defined.
Test Plan provides numerous benefits, for both testers
and developers and the entire project
The source of information for the test plan will be the
Requirements specification document
Test Plan contd..
Test Plan document will clearly explain the scheduled
period like the Execution start date, End date and the
resource allocated for each functionality with the time
period scheduled for that functionality.
During Test plan stage, the way of arranging or grouping
the test cases should be identified. i.e. whether the test
cases can be grouped based on the Functionality or
based on the Requirement number. This avoids the
rework on the test case writing stage
Test Case writing
Test Case writing contd..
Divide the test cases as per the convenience. We have
grouped the test cases into Regression (for previous
release), Internal and End-to-End.
Internal test cases will have the test cases covering the
functionalities which are not dependent on any other
functionalities.
End-to-End test cases will have the entire flow of
interaction with all the modules.
The development team can also suggest some areas
where they feel more testing should be done

Test Case writing contd..
Project Charter and Requirement report document plays a
vital role in testing process. Project charter explains the
overall flow and Plan of the project while the actual test case
writing is based on the Requirement report.
The testing team should discuss with the development
team to have a clear idea about the requirements and also
the tester should understand the places where the code
has been modified. This can help to get more insight and
understand the new process better.
Test Case writing contd..
Test cases should cover all the following requirements
like:
a. Business Requirement doc
b. Technical Requirement doc
c. High Level and detailed level Design doc
After the test cases are written, the testing team should
do a review of all the test cases among themselves This
should be a brain-storming session where all testing team
members should discuss each test case
Generally, each member of the testing team writes the test
cases which they have to execute and are not much aware
of the test cases, scenarios of other member of the team.
Test Case writing contd..
The objective of doing this exercise is to make everyone
aware of the test cases/scenarios and to remove the
dependency on a single person. This review should be
facilitated correctly and points noted
After making peer reviews within the team, the test cases
should be reviewed by the team lead periodically
For Ex.. If test cases are written on a particular module,
then it should be reviewed by the experienced team
member immediately instead of reviewing at the last
moment to save time and also to have some better idea so
that the mistakes done in one module could be avoided in
future
Test Case writing contd..
After the test cases have been reviewed internally, have a
review with the business user. The objective is to inform /
educate them about the test cases which are to be
executed. This is done before the code-drop by
development team
This should be an open-session where you should
encourage them to give suggestions/ scenarios which
they would like to be executed
The review of test cases with the Business team will help
the testing team to understand the business impact of the
code delivered
Test Case Execution
Test Execution contd..
Before we start executing the Test cases, identification of
test data should be done
We should use realistic data that we can show to our
users. Select the "live" data and modifying it to suit our
test needs
We should set the test data in such a manner that we can
club more than one test case and execute them only once
Setting up of data is very useful in batch programs where
it takes a long time to execute the program
Test Execution contd..
This will save a lot of time in executing and setting the
test data for each test case separately
Setting up of precondition needed to execute the
particular test cases should be identified in a formalized
manner to reduce the execution time
Before starting the Execution of test cases, the test cases
should be mapped to the Test plan and Planned execution
date should be identified
Also identify the Software and hardware requirements
needed for executing the test cases
Test Execution contd..
On a daily basis , we need to have a document to ensure
whether all the preconditions are set for the test cases
which are executed on that particular day and also we
need to ensure whether all the test cases are executed as
per the planned execution date
Test Execution can be done through Quality Center
Advantage: By running the test case in quality center we
get the exact time each test case took to run which would
help in our estimation of future releases
We need to interact with the development team to execute
certain test cases which needs technical help
Test Execution contd..
Status Report:
Daily Status can be maintained in a spreadsheet
which can be accessed by both onsite and
offshore. The status and directions to
onsite/offshore can be tracked in the same
spreadsheet. Also the issue tracker can also be
maintained in the same spreadsheet
This Daily status will list the total no of test cases
for that release, No of test cases which are
executed for a particular day, Total no of
incomplete test cases along with the no of defects
found on a particular day
Test Execution contd..
Planned execution of test cases:
Apart from daily status report, we can maintain a
report of Planned execution of test cases. This
report will list the names of the test cases which
are executed for a particular day and the test
cases which are planned to execute for the next
day.
Checklist
Checklist contd..
Checklist can be used on the following documents :
System Plan
Test case document
Test Results document
Checklist contd..
Checklist can be used on the following documents :
System Plan
Test case document
Test Results document
Checklist contd..
Advantages of Checklists :
Use of a checklist ensured that defects / issues
were not repeated
Track Changes: All the additional changes to
templates and different document formats, that
were made as per client requirements, were
updated in the checklist
Effort Reduction: Checklists ensured quick and
thorough self and peer reviews
Reusability: They were also used in creating test
plans, index etc. for new applications belonging to
the same client
Checklist contd..
Attached is the Checklist for Test Plan, test case and Test Results
:


Thank You!!!!