Quality assurance (QA) and software testing are vital parts of the software development process, ensuring your software has no errors, works as it should, and is as efficient as possible. The outsourced software testing will help you

Cutting corners on QA and the software testing process is something that organizations occasionally try and do, and can sadly, lead to failure. At Manao Software we have a team of experienced, fully certified software testers and QA experts ready to ensure your app or software project is a complete success. Here are some key practices we implement to ensure every app that leaves our team is bug-free and working as it should.

Use a Controlled Security Environment for Testing

Using a controlled, sandbox environment for testing software has several advantages as you can isolate the software from the rest of the computing environment, allowing you to check for errors with a higher level of precision.

Using an uncontrolled environment means that other processes can interfere with the test and vulnerabilities may be introduced into the system. This is even more so when you use a cloud-based testing environment, where the opportunities for vulnerabilities to be introduced increase.

Test Throughout the Software Development Cycle

Continuous testing, throughout the development process, is important as it prevents early bugs and errors from causing problems later on in the process. Regular testing allows errors to be fixed quickly and easily, as they come up, and prevents them from snowballing, creating a huge amount of work later on.

This approach, known as shift-left continuous testing, can lead to savings in development time and money, as errors get fixed more quickly and don’t cause other problems later on.

Break Tests Up into Smaller Parts

Rather than carrying out a few, larger tests, breaking the testing process up into smaller stages, each focusing on a specific element of the software (i.e. security testing, UI testing) can make testing more efficient and save time and money in the long run.

Focus on Significant Code Changes

If you are updating an existing piece of software or implementing some major code changes it’s important to focus on these changes when carrying out testing. The larger the code changes the larger the potential for bugs to slip in. And if these code changes are to a part of the software that end users come into direct contact with, then carrying out testing to ensure their experience is not negatively impacted by the changes is even more important.

Test for Maximum Coverage

The higher the coverage of tests the more errors you detect. While 100% coverage is very difficult to achieve, you can get close by using a mix of both automatic and manual software testing strategies, as well as writing tests for both expected and unexpected conditions.

If you plan your testing carefully during the requirements stage this can also help in ensuring you have the maximum coverage possible.

Run Regression Tests

Every time you make changes to the code you run the risk of causing issues with older code that you’ve already tested. So carrying out regression testing in a strategic fashion is vital to make sure new bugs don’t slip into already tested parts of the code.

Regression testing can involve re-running test cases as well as putting in place reusable tests that can be re-run at key stages in the development testing process.

Note and Report All Tests

When it comes to QA best practices, recording and reporting on all tests and their results is essential. Without careful reporting, it’s impossible to know when your product is complete and you can actually end testing.

All reports should be shared between the developers and the QA team and act as a point of communication to ensure everyone is on the same page. Good reporting will also guarantee that all fixes are fully tested.

Isolate the Application from Developers

While the QA team and the developers should work together throughout the development process it’s a very good idea to remove the application from the development environment while testing is taking place. This will ensure that no tweaks to the code are added mid-test.

The application should be isolated for an agreed period of time and this should be planned for when creating your test plan.

Customize Testing

While there may be some tests you can re-use on multiple projects, ideally testing should be customized for each and every application you develop. Different types of software testing can also be more appropriate for different types of projects. This is especially true when an application is designed to be used in a different environment. For example, a mobile app will have very different use cases to a web app and testing should be planned out with the specific use cases in mind.

Value Skilled Testers

When building your QA team you want to make sure you have skilled and experienced testers in the team. While you might think that software developers can also be testers, these two roles require a substantially different skill set, and most programmers and developers are not aware of software testing best practices.

This means that recruiting team members with proven expertise in testing will help strengthen your team and result in a superior product.

Software Testing at Manao Software

While there is a lot more to successful software testing than just this, paying attention to all these factors will result in a more robust and thorough QA process, which in turn will lead to bug-free software that works as it should, and as the end user expects it to.

At Manao Software we are experts in both software development and software testing and have an outsourced team of software testers ready to come on board and complement your existing team, bringing their skills and expertise to you.

The majority of our team is ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) certified and they are all experienced at working in a highly methodical, detail-oriented and systematic way, to ensure any software they encounter will be free of bugs at the end of their testing. We will work with you to decide what level of expertise your project needs and supply the appropriate team, who can then design your custom testing plan.

Contact us to learn more about our outsourced software testing services.