As we move towards a more digitally integrated world, the impact of software is becoming increasingly important. Global corporations are pouring money into high-quality software development. But is it enough?
Evaluating software to determine whether it meets end-user requirements is as paramount as the development process. Companies must effectively test their software to appease customers who demand regular updates with all bugs and glitches fixed.
The only roadblock in the path is that sometimes testing takes time. As a result, all corporations ponder how to speed up the testing cycle.
This article will show 10 ways to speed up testing cycle to maintain quality and significantly raise test velocity.
How to Speed Up Your Software Testing Cycle and Maintain Quality?
The process to speed up testing cycle and maintain quality does not have to imply starting from scratch. All you have to employ new test automation tactics that will help you get there even quicker.
So, here are 10 ways to speed up testing cycle and maintain quality:
1. Optimize The CI/CD Pipeline
It’s time to change your testing strategy if most of your testing time is spent waiting for an upgrade. It is where CI/CD comes into the picture. Using CI/CD tools can save you a lot of time compared to the conventional approach.
The primary purpose of continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) is to push code changes as quickly as possible to speed up testing cycle. Thus, helping the testers can shorten the average time to resolution and guarantee that crucial fixes reach the customers quickly.
2. Bug Reporting
By accurately describing the issue and directing engineers towards its resolution, a good bug report can increase the efficiency of software testing. Contrarily, a poorly written report can cause significant misconceptions between a QA expert and a developer.
Thus, investigating the bugs effectively and writing a good report is the keystone to speed up testing cycle.
The document must not only list potential bug scenarios. Always include a screenshot of each instance of a failure in the software testing.
A thorough bug summary makes it much more effortless to identify the bug’s nature and expedites its fixing. Since bug IDs are difficult to remember, they can also be helpful when looking for a bug in a bug inventory.
3. Implement Parallel Testing
Executing tests simultaneously across various device, browser, and OS combinations are the ideal way to accelerate the execution of automated test scripts.
This way, testers can complete the testing process more quickly by running multiple tests parallelly rather than sequentially. As a result, it will speed up testing cycle.
Let us take an example where you run 30 tests to run parallelly on various devices. The entire test suite will be finished in five seconds if each test takes five seconds. On the other hand, the test would have taken one hundred fifty seconds to complete on a single device.
4. Organize The Testing Process
Although frequently overlooked, this advice is important for accelerating the testing process.
While running the software through various test cases, organizing your test cases may not be one of your foremost preferences. However, it greatly facilitates the process to speed up testing cycle and makes the testing cycle smoother.
So, maintain concise, reusable test cases and automate features at the unit level. It will be less complicated for you to run tests when required if you use sound test management techniques, maintain precise data, and keep neat automation reports.
5. Strike a Balance Between Manual and Automation Testing
Testers frequently place more emphasis on automation testing than manual testing because release time is a crucial component of the test cycle.
However, before the software is made available to the public, manual testing is essential for understanding the user’s viewpoint and identifying bugs. Manual testing lets testers predict user behavior to design an experience that users will cherish.
Hence, automation testing is not a replacement for manual testing. You need to balance manual and automated testing to speed up testing cycle for software while maintaining quality.
6. Decrease Flakiness In The QA Process
As we all know, automation tools help speed up the testing cycle. These tools may, however, produce false positives, which could result in flakiness.
False negatives will only slow you down. Nobody enjoys constantly seeing red and dealing with unpredictable results.
The best way to prevent this is to tackle the issue straightforwardly by removing flaky tests from the build earlier and fixing them quickly.
7. Test on Real Devices
Conducting real-device testing can help testing teams better understand users’ issues when using the software in real-world settings..
Functional testing on actual hardware removes duplication from the quality assurance process and allows QA teams to collect functional performance data without running additional tests.
Real device testing can help testers address these problems before the software’s release.
As a result, businesses will spend less time testing new products after they are released and can even speed up software updates.
8. Use the Container Approach To Get Fast Feedback
Today, various organizations use multiple tools to carry out different tasks when testing software, leading to delays and confusion. Testers must use container approach to get faster feedback to prevent such unwarranted delays in the software testing cycle.
They can separate various methods by creating separate projects using various programming languages or frameworks. It would be best to have an integrated testing environment to access multiple features, plugins, and extensions simultaneously.
It can help you speed up testing cycle more than ever when coupled with the cloud.'
9. Implement Continuous Testing
When testing occurs only once during the cycle, it can become one of the most significant blockages in the software release process. But thanks to continuous testing, we have a clear solution to the problem at hand.
Running automated tests regularly after each change to the code is known as continuous testing. The tests produce more rapid feedback, allowing you to spot faults early and address them more quickly.
“Continuous testing can shorten the time it takes you to give your developers feedback while enhancing the overall quality of your software throughout the entire development cycle. Hence, it will speed up testing cycle for you”.
However, to maintain momentum, you must make it a standard practice to frequently deploy more minor code updates. Thus, continuous testing can only be effective in a testing environment that is routinely updated.
10. Maintain Transparency in Communication
Some of your most valuable resources for ensuring successful and efficient testing are your coworkers. There are always other stakeholders in the software, whether you’re the lone tester on a software team made primarily of developers or are one among many other automation engineers.
By keeping in touch with these individuals, everyone can stay informed about the status of the software, including what is new, what needs to be tested, what has been tested, and what needs to be fixed.
The developers and testers can connect via a G-meet or Huddle call on Slack to discuss the bugs and where they can make improvements.
In addition, the best method is to capture a screenshot or a video of the bug during the test cycle. The right
collaboration tools can make this process easier.
Conclusion
Even if you rely on a simulator like Apple XCode and a mobile emulator like Android SDK, it cannot be easy to test it across various browsers, operating systems, and devices because you have to write the test script, inject it, and run the tests.
The biggest cons of testing on emulators and simulators include being unable to mimic or simulate a real-time environment, among other issues. On cloud platforms, you can test your websites and apps on real devices, simulating real-world situations like gestures and controls.
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