Software Testing Life Cycle

Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) defined as the series of activity conducted to perform the software testing. It defines, what test activity to carry-out and when to accomplish those activities. Each phase has a different goal and deliverables. Now the different phases of STLC are –

1. Requirement Analysis
2. Test Planning
3. Test Case development
4. Environment Set up
5. Test Execution
6. Test Cycle Closure

Requirement Analysis

This is the first step involved in the STLC and in this step QA team understands the requirement in terms of what to test and figure out the dependencies. Team study the requirement from the testing point of view and to understand the requirement in detail the QA team should get in touch with the client, stakeholder or the product team. 

Deliverables-

• List of questions with answers
• Automation feasibility report

Test Planning

Test Planning is the most important phase of the software testing life cycle where all testing strategies are defined, the test manager determines the test effort needed to validate the application. Important aspects like the test estimation, test scope and test strategies are documented in the Test Plan.

Deliverables-

• List of all the documents tools and other components that have to be developed and maintained in support of the testing effort.

Test Case Development

Test case development activity is started after the test planning activity is completed. This is the phase of the STLC where testing team write down detailed test cases. Along with the test case testing team also prepare the test data required in the testing. Once the test cases are ready then these cases are reviewed by the peer members or the QA lead.

Deliverables-

• Test Cases

Test Environment Set up

Setting up the test environment is a vital part of the STLC, a testing environment is the set of software and hardware for the testing team to execute test cases. Team analyze the requirements and prepare a list software and hardware required to set up test environment. Once the environment is set up execute the smoke test cases to check the readiness of the test environment. 

Deliverables-

• The test environment with the test data
• Smoke test cases execution report

Test Execution

The testing team start executing the test cases created in the test case development phase. If any test case is failed the corresponding defect can be reported to the development team via bug tracking system. If any test case is blocked due to any defect then such test cases are marked as blocked. Once the defects are fixed then the team will perform retesting.

Deliverables-

• Test Case execution report
• Defect report

Test Cycle closure

A test closure report by the test lead is published and accomplishing the testing phase. The report is gathered and used to increase the maturity of the test, the learned lessons are analyzed for future references. This helps us to determine the changes that might be required for similar projects and their future release.

Deliverables-

• Test Closure Report

For more question on software testing visit: ALL STQ