#1 Introduction
This document provides detailed information about Quality Assurance plan for web based software. Intended audience of this document consists of developers, testing team, project manager, stack-holders and clients.
This document provides detailed information about Quality Assurance plan for web based software. Intended audience of this document consists of developers, testing team, project manager, stack-holders and clients.
#2 Quality objectives
To achieve high quality of code and functionality to it's customers, team can design a detailed QA plan to be followed throughout development life cycle and post-development life span. To achieve this aim, following objectives should be decided by development team.
- No untested code should be shipped to clients.
- Test criteria must cover at least 75% of code for testing procedure.
- Whatever has been tested is documented for various purposes.
- Each functionality of the software must be tested according to requirement specifications and must run in most popular browsers and platforms in similar way.
#3 Management
#3.1 Team
Quality Assurance team primarily involves Test manager, Developers and Dedicated & Ad-hoc testers. It directly reports to Project manager and/or Development manager.
#3.2 Tasks and Responsibilities
QA team performs following tasks.
- Doing unit testing;
- Doing functionality testing;
- Doing usability testing;
- Managing testing documentation;
- Managing testing guidelines;
- Reviewing test cases;
- Doing continuous testing for core code;
- Providing training to new members;
Breakdown of above tasks by team members is as follows;
- Developers do unit testing of code and make sure that it doesn't break even after making changes in it for new/updated features;
- Dedicated and Ad-hoc testers then test those newly added/updated features in various browsers and tools to make sure that features behave according to requirement specifications;
- Test manager checks created unit & functional tests and re-run them as and when needed. He also writes complex test cases to test code and features from various aspects like stress, load bearing, sanity etc.
- Test manager is also responsible for preparing testing plans and guidelines for existing and new testers. Test manager also manages documentation of test cases and suits in repository for proof of quality control and easier access.
- Development and Test manager together work for running unit tests continuously on test server for consistent quality check.
- Training to new tester is usually provided by Test manager as and when needed during development life cycle.
Details about each task has been provided in following sections.
#4 Testing overview
Software testing is the process used to help identify the correctness, completeness, security, and quality of developed computer software. Testing is a process of technical investigation, performed on behalf of stakeholders, that is intended to reveal quality-related information about the product with respect to the context in which it is intended to operate.
#4.1 Unit testing
When it comes to source code, unit testing of code is performed in order to be sure that there is no problem at code level. In unit testing, unit is known as a part of code which can be a function, a method or a whole class. In short, unit testing tests code of software into various pieces. Hence successful unit testing shows that software is now ready for functional testing.
PHPUnit is a member of the xUnit family of testing frameworks and provides both a framework that makes the writing of tests easy as well as the functionality to easily run the tests and analyse their results.
#4.2 Functionality testing
Purpose of functionality testing is to test whole system (or software sometimes) using automatic and manual tools. Whole system may include PHP code, JS code, HTML etc. In this type of testing, various components of software are tested together. Software like selenium is used to perform functionality testing.
Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment for Selenium tests. It is implemented as a Firefox extension, and allows you to record, edit, and debug tests.
#4.3 User (Usability) testing
Usability testing is for measuring how well people can use some human-made object (such as a web page, a computer interface, a document, or a device) for its intended purpose, i.e. usability testing measures the usability of the object. Usability testing focuses on a particular object or a small set of objects, whereas general human-computer interaction studies attempt to formulate universal principles. Software like ab and mysqlprofile can be used to perform usability testing.
#5 Deliverables
QA deliverables include testing guidelines, manual and automated test cases, statistical and coverage reports and overall documentation related to QA. These are well organized and kept in version control for concerned project's application.
#4 Testing overview
Software testing is the process used to help identify the correctness, completeness, security, and quality of developed computer software. Testing is a process of technical investigation, performed on behalf of stakeholders, that is intended to reveal quality-related information about the product with respect to the context in which it is intended to operate.
#4.1 Unit testing
When it comes to source code, unit testing of code is performed in order to be sure that there is no problem at code level. In unit testing, unit is known as a part of code which can be a function, a method or a whole class. In short, unit testing tests code of software into various pieces. Hence successful unit testing shows that software is now ready for functional testing.
PHPUnit is a member of the xUnit family of testing frameworks and provides both a framework that makes the writing of tests easy as well as the functionality to easily run the tests and analyse their results.
#4.2 Functionality testing
Purpose of functionality testing is to test whole system (or software sometimes) using automatic and manual tools. Whole system may include PHP code, JS code, HTML etc. In this type of testing, various components of software are tested together. Software like selenium is used to perform functionality testing.
Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment for Selenium tests. It is implemented as a Firefox extension, and allows you to record, edit, and debug tests.
#4.3 User (Usability) testing
Usability testing is for measuring how well people can use some human-made object (such as a web page, a computer interface, a document, or a device) for its intended purpose, i.e. usability testing measures the usability of the object. Usability testing focuses on a particular object or a small set of objects, whereas general human-computer interaction studies attempt to formulate universal principles. Software like ab and mysqlprofile can be used to perform usability testing.
#5 Deliverables
QA deliverables include testing guidelines, manual and automated test cases, statistical and coverage reports and overall documentation related to QA. These are well organized and kept in version control for concerned project's application.
#6 Testing Guidelines
Testing guidelines and goals help achieve highest standards in quality control. They have been prepared to assist developers and testers to write effective test cases and to document them for various purposes.
#6.1 Unit testing
To read unit testing related guidelines and principles, read section #4 in this document.
Testing guidelines and goals help achieve highest standards in quality control. They have been prepared to assist developers and testers to write effective test cases and to document them for various purposes.
#6.1 Unit testing
To read unit testing related guidelines and principles, read section #4 in this document.
#6.2 Functionality testing
To read functional testing related guidelines and principles, read section #4 in this document.
#7 Review process
Review of test cases is checking test cases by test colleagues and/or test manager in order to make sure that those are correct or any misunderstandings in the requirements or anything missed out or not. Since review is a continuous process, test manager regularly checks previously designed test cases and re-run them whenever needed.
- Review process comprises following things:
- Completeness- Do test cases contain enough conditions of code and features to be tested?
- Accuracy- Are test cases accurately defined and logical? Are there missing elements?
- Testable- Are test cases testable?
#8 Continuous testing
Continuous testing uses excess cycles on a workstation to continuously run regression tests in the background, providing rapid feedback about test failures as source code is edited. It reduces the time and energy required to keep code well-tested, and prevents regression errors from persisting uncaught for long periods of time.
For more information about continuous testing, please refer this document.
#9 Training
Training is important part of any department during software development life cycle. Test manager regularly provides training to QA team to improve testing procedure and to make it as effective as possible.
#10 References
http://phing.info/trac/
