Controlling Development and QA Costs with Test Management Software

Effective test management is essential for optimizing the features, functionality and quality of a software application. The process further ensures that best product is developed by deploying limited resources, while implementing smart test management practices at various stages of the project. Many organizations, nowadays, use test management software programs to make plan and manage the testing process effectively. These programs are further effective in covering a wide variety of test activities including test planning, test authoring, test execution, test tracking and test reporting. Further, an organization can use test management software to build complex applications by deploying teams deployed across different geographical locations, while controlling both development and quality assurance (QA) cost.

Using Test Management Software to Curtail Software Development and QA Cost

1. Enhanced Software Quality:- The quality and performance of the software will have a direct impact on its popularity. So each enterprise has to deploy both manpower and resources to carry out QA activities. Some of these applications also need to be tested frequently to fix all errors, bugs and flaws through additional coding and testing. The test management software enables organizations to cover all test activities. So an organization has option to reduce operational cost by reducing manpower and resources.

2. Easy to Outsource Projects:- Most companies outsource software development and QA projects to control labor cost. The test management software makes it easier for such organizations to coordinate between the members of its distributed team residing in different location. Thus, an enterprise can easily outsource the project to a region that has favorable payroll standards. Many reports have already highlighted how test management software facilitates quality assurance efforts, and brings down QA cost.

3. Option to Hire Experienced QA Engineers:- The outcome of a software testing project is often affected by the knowledge, expertise and experience of the QA engineers. It is also important for an enterprise to hire experienced QA engineers to optimize its QA efforts. But each organization, nowadays, explores option to beat competition by cutting down project cost. That is why; most organizations hesitate to hire experienced QA engineering team to control cost. The QA management software enables companies to avail the services of an offshore team of experienced testing professionals without incurring any additional expenses.

4. Reduce Software Development Cost:- A constant increase is noted in the number of organizations adopting test driven development (TDD) approach. At the same time, many companies even automate their testing efforts to avail the Agile benefits. Each organization can use real-time test management software to release a high quality and flawless product, with reduced development time. As the tools enable developers to access the current updates, they can easily implement the coding or bug reports changes at once. Further, the most current and updated version of the software can be evaluated to identify errors in the early stages of the process. As many reports have highlighted an organization can control development cost by identifying and fixing bugs earlier in the product cycle.

5. Optimize Bug Identification Efforts:- An enterprise can get higher ROI in the long run by constantly optimizing its QA efforts. Also, each organization must use test automation tools according to specific needs of a project. The right test management software will definitely optimize the organization’s bug identification efforts. The software further helps enterprises to enhance both efficiency and productivity by adopting Agile project management techniques. Similar to Agile development model, the test management software also enables QA engineers to evaluate the software early and often. Further, the test cases can be reused in future production cycles to save both time and resources.

Each enterprise has option to choose from several test management software programs. But the organization must evaluate the pros and cons of each application to ensure that it is effective in bringing down the software development and QA cost. And for this you would need to hire software testing companies who have proven expertise and experience in handling projects relevant to your business domain.

We provide software testing services. If you would like to get your application tested by our certified software testers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

A Wakeup Call for Software QA

A constant increase is noted in the number of enterprises integrating software QA as part of the development cycles. Also, many companies are adopting test driven development approach (TDD) to enhance quality, efficiency and productivity. But a number of reports have highlighted how the software QA strategies of many organizations fail despite putting time, resources and funds. Several experts have further opinioned the software testing industry needs a reality check in order to thrive in upcoming years. According to these experts, software QA industry, just like manufacturing industry, must explore innovative ways to meet the constant changes in test automation tools, testing methodologies and application architecture. At the same time, each organization also needs to understand how to make its QA strategy more realistic and effective.

How to Make Software QA More Realistic

1. Identify Key Elements of Software Testing: While making the testing strategy, you must identify the key elements of software QA like test strategy, test plan, test cases, test environment and test data. Each of these elements contributes towards optimizing your software QA. These elements can also be considered by your manual as well as automated testing strategy. Each aspects of a QA must concentrate on these elements to emulate the real user behavior and environment. Further, these elements will help you in deciding the test automation tools required to create the perfect environment for software QA.

2. Eliminate the Unnecessary Processes: While planning software QA, many people forget that many quality control techniques have evolved from the manufacturing industry. These techniques and practices often make software testing both process-driven and procedural-driven. There are always chances that some of these process-driven or procedural-driven techniques may not complement the latest trends in software testing. That is why; it becomes essential to evaluate each of these processes based on what you need to check. You must identify and eliminate these process-driven and procedural-driven methods to effectuate your QA strategy.

3. Avoid the Over-Hyped Tools: When you decide to automate your software QA, it becomes essential to invest in test automation tools and programs. You have options to choose from loads of testing tools available in the market. Most enterprises prefer the latest test automation tools to get better results. But you must remember that often companies launch marketing campaigns to hype their software testing tools. There are also chances that the latest tools available in the market may not complement your specific needs. So you must evaluate the pros and cons of each tool to ensure that it is managing both quality and coverage, while articulating the risk properly.

4. Decide the Test Cases to be Automated: You have option to automate all or selected test cases. Many experts advise QA engineers to automate the test cases that need to be tested repeatedly and frequently. At the same time, many experts even recommend enterprises to automate most of the test cases to get high quality and ROI. An organization has to invest more funds to automate its software QA completely. But one must not ignore the test cases that can be evaluated only manually. The testing strategy of an organization must seamlessly integrate both automated and manual test cases to deliver quality test data.

5. Prevent Context Leakage: Many companies outsource software QA to save both efforts and funds. However, the outsourcing of software testing projects can have a negative effect due to context leakage. Similar to software development, context is of great importance to both testing and QA reporting. Also, the QA engineers deployed by the outsourced company do not have access to the primary source of information that results in more context leakages. So you must explore option to prevent context leakage while outsourcing software QA. It is always important to coordinate with the QA team constantly to make the testing more contextual and realistic.

The software QA strategy of an enterprise must consider the latest trends in software application testing. It must emphasize on some of the best practices and industry standards to make the process more productive and efficient.

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

3 Effective Testing Techniques for Quick Software Bug Detection

When production process is being undergone for consumer products or goods, quality control along with testing are being conducted at each manufacturing stage. If during any of the stages any flaw comes to the forefront, the product is often sent back for reworking and correction or it is discarded completely. This is almost the same in case of software manufacturing as well. Even if the programmer is excellent he is bound to make some mistake or the other; there must be at least 1-3 flaws on each hundred statement. So testing forms a very important stage, consuming almost half of work along with time for the production of a functional program.

In fact early detection of software bugs result in saving of a lot of energy, time and money. So you have to employ good techniques to detect flaws early on. There can be many ways of approaching evaluation. The three most effective testing techniques for quick software bug detection are discussed here.

Using soap opera tests along with cases

The focus of soap opera testing is on the software's role. The product cannot be considered just as a bundle full of features; the consideration should rather be on the accomplishments that humans can achieve with this tool's help. These tests may almost seem hypothetical as well as crazy but informal, speedy estimate can be provided of the quality of the product. This method will help you check the software's functionality at the very beginning, avoiding many expensive defects. This technique is much loved by business clients since real life scenarios are replicated or at least tried to. This kind of testing is often performed involving the clients and as part of requirement analysis. However, this test is quite complicated and involves a lot of details which can prove to be quite overwhelming for the testing team as well as the users. Due to the complicated nature of these tests, occurrence of a single error results in wastage of a lot of time, merely for the isolation of the error source. This evaluation helps in finding functional errors in the early stages and it is just that- a simple as well as fast way to find out some functional errors.

Quick attacks

In situations where you have no idea regarding the software's functionalities along with requirements, it will not be helpful to use the conventional technique to transform the requirements into tests. Instead you should be attacking the application; enter the wrong info to confuse it. This works by keeping a field blank in a form to be filled. If you are asked to maintain work flow then a different path should be taken. In an input field supporting only digits, letters should be written; you can also make a very long number so that it cannot be processed by the system. This kind of random attacking will help you check scenarios unexpected by the programmers. This system helps in the evaluation of the software's functionalities and that too within a very limited time. After the test is completed, you will have some fair idea regarding the application. However, though bugs can be detected, sometimes those flaws do not hold much importance; this system is not very focused.

Common failure modes

During the development of some specific variety of software, some classic errors come up. This evaluation method functions by helping you to find recurring errors. Thereby the programmers can be trained what not to do so that progress is made and this kind of issue does not crop up with applications that are of similar type. Common problems of some platform can be detected with the help of this method; you can then work on those so that the mistakes are not repeated. But using this technique too much makes it even more vulnerable. This is not a very dependable technique; it just helps you detect errors early on.

For quick detection of some basic errors the above mentioned methods are good solutions. For more errors that are deep rooted you will be requiring a testing method that is more thorough and may be a little more complicated; evaluating thoroughly and continuously will help make the software error-free.

We provide QA testing services. If you would like to hire software testing companies for help on your projects, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.