![]() Streamlining user acceptance testing (UAT) with Agile. Pairing user acceptance testing (UAT) with process- streamlining Agile development practices seems like a no- brainer.. By submitting your personal information, you agree that Tech. Target and its partners may contact you regarding relevant content, products and special offers. You also agree that your personal information may be transferred and processed in the United States, and that you have read and agree to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy. UAT helps ensure that applications will be used effectively once deployed, and Agile promises to shorten the UAT process. However, moving UAT to Agile requires due diligence. Using Agile practices requires organizations to re- evaluate how and when UAT is executed. Building a UAT Center of Excellence (Co. E) framework will help project, test and development managers improve UAT test coverage and efficiency with less Agile adoption pain. What is user acceptance testing? When business teams define their requirements, it is often assumed that developers and QA testers will develop a system that precisely meets all defined business requirements. However, real- time complexities and vast data combinations, limit the spelling out of all business requirements explicitly at such an early stage of a project life cycle. ![]() Defect Probability Defect Report This is a list of recommended/top/best Software Testing Blogs listed in ALPHABETICAL ORDER. We have chosen the blogs considering the. Software testing articles. Introduction. I get a lot of questions each month about user acceptance testing (UAT) - what it is, how to perform it, which (if any. What is User Acceptance Testing? Introduction: This article attempts to explain the process of User Acceptance Testing. Once the application is ready to be released. This limitation drives the need for an additional layer of testing, after the unit and system integration testing phase and before the movement of the application into the development phase. This is known as user acceptance testing (UAT), which is ideally done by business users - - end users who would actually use the systems. They check the functionality for delivery as per the defined business requirements. The objective of user acceptance testing is to: Ensure compliance of the application with business requirements. Check the business functionalities or logic from a risk perspective and. ![]() Certify that the system meets all business requirements. UAT includes testing requirements for functional, operational, performance and interface areas. The fact that UAT takes place after the development of an application in the project lifecycle makes it even more critical, as it’s the last chance to screen and solve issues which were not detected earlier in the development lifecycle. UAT is about identifying the gaps between how the completed application works and how it’s expected to perform in a business environment. Challenges in UATUAT’s primary objective is to eliminate the risks of production failures and ensure that the end application or system meets all desired business requirements. However, an application being developed in an Agile mode leads to reduced and frequent cycles of testing, which in turn mandates UAT testers to develop skills of optimization testing techniques, automation and work in cohesion with the development and QA teams. The challenges for UAT in an Agile development model can be broadly classified into four categories which include business challenges, people & process, governance and tools & automation as listed in the figure 1 below: Figure 1: UAT Challenges in an Agile mode of development. Overcoming challenges with a UAT Center of Excellence. The recommended framework. The UAT Center of Excellence (Co. E) addresses all challenges of UAT in an Agile development model, where the testing processes, domain and technical skills are developed and enhanced through: Sharing best practices. Reusing key assets like people, processes and tools. Establishing a governance model. Optimizing testing through tools & accelerators and. Establishing a knowledge management framework. The UAT Co. E would result in efficiencies with standardized processes, a metrics- driven governance model, reusable automation scripts and test cases that can be used across various sprints & artifacts. Figure 2 is a snapshot of the proposed UAT Center of Excellence. Figure 2: The UAT Centre of Excellence. The UAT approach. We recommend a unique UAT approach that addresses all its challenges in an Agile development model, where the UAT team would work in tandem with the development and QA teams using Co. E best practices to enhance test coverage and efficiency. The UAT team gets involved early in the project life cycle and is engaged in the entire iterative process of the recommended approach as seen in figure 3. The UAT team works with a story card acceptance criteria for each iteration. This helps eliminate many potential defects with early business validations and improves efficiencies through optimum automation of regression test beds. Figure 3 defines the UAT team’s responsibility at each stage of the iterative process. Figure 3: The Recommended UAT Approach within the UAT COE, part of the iterative process. Proposed methodologies in the recommended UAT approach. The following innovative methodologies are recommended in the proposed UAT approach: 1. Infosys business driven test ideas technique (i. BDTI). The i. BDTI strategy is built on an Agile test design approach. The strategy includes building test scenarios using one- liner test ideas that help capture test requirements and improve testing coverage and effectiveness. Multi- dimensional requirements traceability matrix. The UAT team would leverage the multi- dimensional requirements traceability matrix which has five layers. The UAT scenarios generated from user stories and business requirements are a core part of this process. Test data management. To ensure comprehensive test coverage, the UAT team is involved earlier in the life cycle to identify test data, resulting in better control and reduced dependency on the development and QA teams for the same. Risk- based testing (RBT). RBT helps minimize failure and optimize testing. Metrics- driven governance model. A UAT level metrics dashboard helps assess and govern the health of the UAT by monitoring the project quality information, status and productivity details via the metrics- driven governance model. Benefits of the proposed UAT Approach. The key benefits of this approach are: 1. Reduced testing costs. Early involvement of the UAT team in the life cycle leads to the early identification of defects and reduces costs associated with rework significantly. Reduced UAT cycle. Optimized test coverage and accelerated test execution lead to a shorter UAT cycle as per Agile requirements. Business value. Deployment of robust processes, tools, accelerators, optimized testing techniques and automation lead to applications or systems that meet all business requirements, timelines and are devoid of production failures. This helps create business value for organizations. 4. Stakeholder involvement. The metrics driven governance model ensures that all stakeholders get the needed information on UAT and its progress. Reduced test design effort and increased test coverage. While the test design effort reduces, the testing coverage increases with methodologies like i. BDTI, multi- dimensional requirements traceability metrics, risk- based testing and a metrics driven governance model. Conclusion. With most projects moving to an Agile mode of testing, the software development lifecycle has become shorter, which makes it mandatory for UAT to use efficient testing processes, automation and metrics in order to deliver high quality end systems or applications that are low in cost and require minimal effort. UAT in a Co. E framework can help organizations achieve these benefits for an Agile development program. A successful UAT is crucial for deploying systems devoid of errors and business risks. This in turn helps an organization achieve its intended business goals earlier. How does your organization execute UAT? If operating in an Agile environment, have you made changes to your UAT processes to meet the challenges of changing requirements? Let SSQ know by sending an email to yfrancino@techtarget. About the authors: Ravindra Kambhampati (Ravindra_Kambhampati@infosys. Senior Project Manager with Independent Validation Solutions Unit. His core competency is in designing and executing projects across the SDLC spectrum (ADM and Testing). He has been involved in various proposals in the Insurance and Healthcare domain. His areas of specialization are mainframes application testing and development, presales activities, design and implementation of TCo. E. He holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering. Srinivas Yeluripaty (Srinivas_Yeluripaty@infosys. Group Project Manager working with Infosys FSI Testing Practice. When to Stop Testing (Exit Criteria in Software Testing) — Software Testing Help. Exit criteria in Testing: “Well begun is half done” – Applies everywhere, even software testing. Often we see software testers very enthusiastic at the beginning of the project. We create testing documents such as Test Strategy, Test Plan or Test Cases eagerly and enthusiastically. Then we get to testing software with a BANG! This is only amplified by the interesting defects we find at the beginning of the project. Getting them resolved will only add to our accomplishment. As we find loads of defects and complete the first run we move on to the next phase. When we get to the second run we kind of relax and as is the general human tendency of getting bored with testing the same thing in the second run. Many testers feel that it becomes monotonous work in later runs and start losing interest in testing the same software over and over again. When we reach to, maybe the third run, one question starts haunting us and that is “When to Stop Testing the software?”I bet you must have felt the same way and asked, “When to stop testing?”, at least once. I would say the question is “When, where and how to stop Testing?” : )Conceptually we have read and many testers believe that there cannot be a specific condition or equation to decide “When to stop testing?” There are a number of factors to consider before we conclude on this question. In today’s article, I would like to share my thoughts on how to conclude testing activities when we reach to a point in our testing cycle where we can say this testing is enough. We will do this with the help of a few real life examples in a typical testing cycle. When is it Enough Testing? When can we say that this much testing is enough? Can testing ever be completed? In order to answer these questions, we will have to analyze testing activities from start to end. Please note that – I am going to define these activities in a lay man’s terms – Not in a fancy technical way.Let’s consider you are beginning testing of a new project.Initial Activities: The testing team receives requirements.The testing team starts planning and designing. . Initial Test documents are ready and reviewed. Testing Run #1)The testing team starts test execution once they receive the developed product. During the testing phase, they execute various scenarios in order to break the software and find many defects. Also, the defect rate here is higher because the application is new and is undergoing evaluation for the very first time.)The Defects get fixed by developers and returned back to test team for retest. The testing team performs retesting of the defects and executes regression. Once most of the high severity defects are resolved and the software looks stable, development team releases the next version. Testing Run #2)The testing team starts the second run of testing and similar activities are executed as Run 1. In this process during the second testing run, few more defects are caught. The Defects get fixed by developers and returned back to the test team for a retest. Testing team re- tests the defects and performs regression. This can continue forever. Run 3, Run 4 onwards until all defects in the software are found and software becomes bug- free. If we want to draw a flow chart for these activities, it will look roughly like below: From the above flow chart, we can clearly conclude that testing can continue until all defects in the software are found. But the question is – Is it possible to find every single defect in the software? Let’s try to find the answer for this million dollar question : ). Stopping when all defects are found: Is it possible? Most software is complex and has an enormous testing scope. It is not impossible to find all defects in the software but it will take forever. Even after finding many bugs in the software, no one can actually guarantee that the software is defect free now. There cannot be a situation where we can confidently say that we have completed testing, found all defects in the software and it does not have any more bugs. Moreover, the purpose of testing is not to find each and every defect in the software. The intent of software testing is to prove that the software does work as intended by breaking it or finding deviation between its current behavior and expected behavior. There are unlimited defects in software and hence it’s impractical to test it until all defects are found as we can never know which defect is the last one. The truth is we cannot depend on finding all the defects in the software to conclude our testing. Honestly speaking, testing is endless and testing cycles will continue until a decision is made when and where to stop. Now it becomes even more complicated to come to a decision to stop testing. If “stopping when all defects are found” is not the criterion to stop testing then on what basis should it be decided? Decision to stop testing: Exit criteria. Let’s now try to understand – What are the most important factors to be considered while concluding testing activities? I feel the decision to stop testing is mostly dependent on Time, Budget and Extent of Testing. The most common approach is to stop when either Time / Budget is exhausted or all test scenarios are executed. However, with this approach, we will be compromising on the quality of testing and this will not give enough confidence about the software; how? Let’s see with an example. Test Scenario: Suppose you are testing a software module. You have been allocated certain budget to cover it. The project timelines are for a month. Total Test Scenarios are 2. You are the only one testing this module. Scenario #1)Week 1: You find the showstopper / severity 1 defect on day 1 and the entire testing is blocked for 3 days. Hence you are not able to execute any of the scenarios until Severity 1 defect is resolved. After losing 3 days, the blocker is resolved and you continue with your execution. At the end of the week, you complete 2. Week 2: You start testing the software putting more focus on defects finding. You open few more Severity 1, Severity 2 and Severity 3 defects during the second week and at the end of the week, you are able to cover 7. Scenarios. Week 3: By the start of the 3rd week you get all the high priority defects resolved so along with execution of pending scenarios you now have to re- test all the defects which have landed in the testing bucket. Continuing with the good progress you cover 1. By this time all high priority defects are already found and reported. So, now you have only Severity 3 defects left to be found. Week 4: By week 4 you need to re- test most of the opened defects and remaining 8. Scenarios. With this by the end of week 4, you are able to complete up to 1. High and Medium priority defects fixed and re- tested. Putting this information in Tabular form: Weeks. Test Activities Performed. Result at the end of the Week. Week 1• Day 1 - Show Stopper Defect Found.• Testing is Blocked due to Severity 1 defect found on Day 1.• Blocker defect resolved on Day 4.• Test Execution continued until end of week 1.• High Priority / Critical Defects opened.• 2. Scenarios completed. Week 2• More focus on defects finding.• Execution of remaining Test Scenarios.• Re- testing of fixed defects.• Few more Severity 1, Severity 2 and Severity 3 defects opened.• Total cover 7. Scenarios covered. Week 3• Re- testing of all high priority defects.• Execution of Remaining Test Scenarios.• Only Severity 3 defects left to be found.• Few more Severity 1, Severity 2 and Severity 3 defects opened.• Total cover 1. Scenarios covered. Week 4• Re- Testing of all High and Medium Priority Defects.• Execution of remaining Test Scenarios.• Few more Severity 3 defects opened.• Total cover 1. Scenarios covered. Should you stop here? The reason that you have exhausted Testing Time completely and have reported and fixed most of the high priority defects. Will stopping at this point give you confidence about the software? Not really due to below reasons: Scenarios are not executed completely. Few flows are not even tested once. All the Scenarios which are covered are executed only once. Software still has defects in it. Regression is not covered. Scenario #2) Week 1: You find Severity 1 defect on day 1 and complete testing is blocked for 3 days. Hence you are not able to execute any of the scenarios until Severity 1 Defect is resolved. After losing 3 days the blocker is resolved and you continue with your execution.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
November 2017
Categories |