Testing is a critical phase in the software development process. It ensures that the software meets the requirements, functions as expected, and is reliable. However, there are many challenges that can erupt throughout the testing process.
In this blog, let me take you on a tour of the challenges faced while performing software testing, provide you some tips and tricks to overcome those challenges and also talk beyond catching bugs to efficiently test the software ensuring quality releases.
Challenges faced in Software Testing
Testers or the QAs face various obstacles while performing Software Testing. These challenges must be overcome in order to perform testing without any blockers ensuring on time release of software to the market. Some of the commonly faced challenges are -
Time Constraints: Time Constraint is the most commonly faced challenge by QAs in mostly every software project. Testers have to work within tight schedules with limited time available for testing. With less time to test makes the testers rush test activities which eventually leads to overlooking some critical issues.
Changing requirements: With Agile in place, though we have the flexibility to adhere to changing requirements, it can be a significant challenge, as the QA team has to align all the tests as per the latest changes. With the release deadlines, it leads to Technical Debt for the testing team as they have to update all the automation stuff as well as the test scenarios/cases to align them with latest specifications.
Test Data Management: Generating and managing realistic test data is a challenge that is faced by almost every testing team especially while working on large and complex systems. Accurate and realistic test data is required for effective testing, in case that is not available chances of missing critical scenarios increases.
Limitation of resources: Infrastructure, tools, and shortage of skilled QAs are some of the commonly faced limitations by QA teams. In addition to these, Insufficient testing environments, lack of automation tools, and a shortage of experienced personnel can lead to the overall blocking of software testing thereby slowing the delivery time to the market.
Communication Issues: Communication and Collaboration between the Testers, BAs, Developers and the Stakeholders is most important for successful testing and improving the overall quality of the product. However, due to miscommunication, lack of clarity, experience and poor collaboration, overall quality of the product suffers.
To overcome these challenges, effective planning, coordination between teams and the use of the right tools and techniques are required.
How to overcome the software testing challenges?
With the multiple challenges obstructing software testing, it becomes a kind of blocker for the testing team to progress with their daily activities. It is therefore required to resolve these challenges to work efficiently. Here are the following tips that can be considered -
Test Early: Testing early helps in early detecting and resolution of the issues. It is not necessary that we test the software only. The bug can be hidden in the specification as well as the feature request. Going thoroughly through the specification can help in detecting the hidden issues and correcting them before they are leaked into the product. This helps in overall cost and efforts.
IBM System Science Institute Relative Cost of Fixing Defects
The cost of finding bugs in the later phase of software development is much higher as compared to that in the initial phase of development.
Prioritize Test Cases: Focus on the complex and high priority test scenarios, this will help you catch the critical bugs that might impact the overall functioning of the product. Prioritization can be done based on business requirements, its impact and probability of failure.
Business Analysts and Domain Experts’ help can be taken here to focus on major critical areas of the software and prioritize them for testing.
Review and update the Test Cases/Scenarios: As the requirements keep on changing, it is good to review and update the test cases/scenarios on a regular basis. This can help to avoid creation of Technical Debt and can save time by reusing these updated cases/scenarios for testing in subsequent cycles.
Medium
Automate Regression Tests: Regression testing refers to retesting the existing functionality of the software after a defect is fixed, to check the stability of the software and verify that the fix doesn’t have any side effects. Performing regression testing manually is a very tedious and boring task and requires lots of manual effort. Hence, the test scenarios that need frequent testing should be automated.
Automating the regression tests helps in running all the tests quickly and get faster feedback on the builds.
For example, if you are working on a project that is developing an e-commerce application. Most of the regression tests would need registration, login, adding to product to cart, making payment, etc. All these test scenarios can be automated and regression testing can be a big time saver.
Exploratory Testing of the product: Exploratory testing refers to combining your experience, testing skills and domain knowledge to uncover the hidden issues that have not been discovered yet. It helps in adding more value to the product by exploring and testing the unexplored areas.
Usability Testing: It refers to testing the software for its ease of use. Most of the users stop using the software as they don’t consider it user friendly. This type of testing helps in checking the overall user experience and identify the design flaws and usability issues.
*Improve Communication and Collaboration *- Communication is the key in Software Engineering. Almost half of your issue gets resolved at the earliest if you communicate well. Having an open communication and collaborating with developers, designers, stakeholders can ensure shared understanding of requirements, defects, and testing goals.
Use Test Pyramid: The concept of Test Pyramid was introduced by Mike Cohn in his book Succeeding with Agile. Test Pyramid helps in promoting a balanced approach to testing by organizing tests into different layers.
Unit Tests, Integration Tests, System Tests, End to End tests and Manual exploratory tests are layers of the Test Pyramid. As we have tests at every layer it helps in Continuous Testing and provides with faster feedback by detecting issues early and fixing them.
Software Testing Beyond bug detections
In this modern era of software development, there are teams working on agile methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, etc. We need to think about software testing beyond catching the bugs and writing the bug tickets.
How about taking actions to avoid the bug leakage in the code from the initial development stage itself? How about testing continuously without putting in manual efforts? How about baking the quality within the code itself?
There are lots of other areas to think about as well. It can all lead to delivering quality software and allow the team to maintain a balanced schedule between their work and life.
Let’s take a look at the other side of the term called “Software Testing”
Confirming Functional Integrity: Software Testing aims to ensure that the software is functioning as per the requirement specified. QAs check that the software is performing all the actions which it is intended to do. Also, more importantly, it is also important to verify that it is not performing the actions it is not intended to do. The latter point helps to find out the deviations from the actual working of the software and fix it before it makes its way to the production.
Performing Usability and Accessibility Testing: By performing the Usability testing, it can be ensured that the end user would be able to use the software smoothly. If the background color of the application is too dark or too itchy for the eyes, users may stop using it. Such suggestions can help improve the overall quality of the software.
Accessibility testing should be performed based on the targeted audience that would be using the software. By performing Accessibility Testing, we can check that software is easily accessible by differently abled people.
Checking out for Security Vulnerabilities: It can help in uncovering the potential security threats that can be faced by the system and make sure that the resources and data in the system are protected by attackers. The goal for doing this is-
- To identify the security risks.
- To measure potential threats.
- To identify vulnerabilities such as weak passwords, data breaches, unpatched software and misconfigured systems that could be exploited by the intruders.
Performing Cross Browser and Compatibility Testing: With multiple Operating Systems such as Windows, MacOS, etc. and different browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, etc. It is necessary to check the software is working as expected on different OS/Browser combinations. It can help uncover hidden issues which might go untested based on the assumption that if the software works on Chrome browser, it should work on Firefox browser as well.
Compatibility testing can help uncover issues related to installation, setup and configuration of software on different platforms like Windows, MacOS, Linux,etc.
Integrating automated tests in CICD: Automated tests triggering automatically one after another once the developer pushes any code to the remote repository helps to get faster feedback without much manual effort. It can help bake the quality within the product itself.
Performance Optimization: With multiple features getting added to the software brings in the responsibility to keep a check on the performance of the software.
For example, in the case of a mobile project, areas like memory usage, battery usage, App load time, data sync time, page load time, App refreshing time, etc. are some of the areas which can be checked and accordingly if any lagging is found it can be improved. It is also important to check for fallback scenarios in case of network issues, App crash, etc.
Collaborating with DevOps: QAs can also contribute and collaborate with the DevOps team. Checking logs in case of the pipeline failure, helping the developers in identifying the root cause of failures, setting up pipelines for different environments, running the test on cloud platforms, monitoring the automated pipelines, etc. are some of the areas where QAs can manage and help the DevOps team.
Organize Bug Bash: A bug bash is an activity where developers, testers, business analysts, designers, operations people and even stakeholders come together to perform all hands on, on the software. This helps in locating hidden bugs more quickly as every person uses the software differently. QAs should organize such bug bash a week before the release just in case if there are any critical issues discovered, it can be quickly fixed.
All this can happen once all the tedious tasks that need a lot of manual effort are automated so the testers can focus and work on overall improvement of the software.
Conclusion
Software testing goes beyond simply finding and fixing bugs. It encompasses functional validation, performance optimization, verifying usability and accessibility, identifying security vulnerabilities , cross browser and compatibility testing, and regression testing. By exploring all these areas in detail, software testers can play a crucial role in ensuring the quality, reliability, and bring user satisfaction to software products.
It is important to tailor your testing techniques to the specific needs and requirements of the software project. By using comprehensive testing practices throughout the development lifecycle robust, efficient, and user-centric software can be delivered with quality.
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