Matt Davies Stockton Provides Best Practices for Software Testing

 

According to Matt Davies Stockton, modern software applications need to be compatible across various platforms while being secure from the threat of cyber attacks and other vulnerabilities. Plus, it needs to be sophisticated and user-friendly enough to provide a high-quality user experience. Software testing is a crucial process that helps to ensure software quality control,  solve technical issues, and prevent any errors that can harm the user experience.

The Details

Here are some of the best practices you can implement for software testing:

1. The software test cycles should be planned proactively – It is important to proactively plan the software quality assurance (QA) tests since it helps to improve communication among the software teams. The best way to do that is to create robust documentation that includes a quality management plan, test policy, test plans, test strategy, and test case.

Let’s look at them in brief:

• Quality Management Plan – The quality management plan outlines software quality requirements and the aimed acceptable level of quality. Typically, it includes components such as the quality objectives, quality roles, quality standards, quality roles and responsibilities, and more.
• Test Policy – It is the most high-level document that defines the test principles adopted by the company and its main test objectives.
• Test Strategy – It is a product-level document created by a business analyst or the project manager to define the software testing approaches used to achieve the testing objectives.
• Test Plan – This is an operational document typically written by a QA lead or manager that describes what to test, how to test, when to test, and who will do the tests.

2. The software test should be conducted in a controlled secure test environment – It is crucial to invest in a secure testing infrastructure since utilizing software-as-a-service (SaaS) can leave your software exposed to vulnerabilities that are easily detectable by the end users.

It is a good practice to maintain a dedicated software security testing team that is familiar with relevant OWASP critical security and can perform the necessary penetration tests to discover potential vulnerabilities.

3. Regular QA technical reviews should be conducted – Formal technical reviews can help to uncover any logical or functional errors that might be present at the early stages of the product development.

Technical reviews should occur in a formal group meeting where stakeholders with various roles can gather and check the software requirements and standards if it is satisfactory. Generally, these are conducted on mature products with known target users and market segmentation.

The following review report addresses questions such as who did the review, what exactly was reviewed, what findings were discovered during the review, and the decisions reached as a result. Formal technical reviews can consist of review meetings, walkthroughs, and inspections.

Conclusion

Matt Davies Stockton suggests you employ code quality measurements to improve software testing. This means you have to ensure the quality objectives are documented, measurable, reviewed and tracked based on certain metrics. These can include indicators such as reliability, testability, maintainability, usability, performance efficiency, rate of delivery, and security.