Software Testing Life Cycle: What It Is and What It Means
It’s often considered that software testing is a single action, like temperature measurement, maybe a bit more sophisticated. Here is a piece of code, so you go and test it, detect bugs, and return for fixing. In reality, though, testing works quite differently. Software testing life cycle is a scheme that makes testing as efficient as possible because of correct implementation.
Stages of STLC
For the beginning, instead of a single testing phase, STLC implies that testing takes place along with software development life cycle (SDLC). This approach may be far from everyday practices, but it’s been tested itself and found reasonable. Modern practices of STLC include the following phases:
- Requirements. The testing team learns the requirements to check their implementation later.
- Planning. Not only do you identify your crucial metrics during this phase, you also define activities and resources you will use and address while testing.
- Analysis. This is when you specify what exactly you test: which features, which modules, which compatibility, and so on. This also includes consideration of factors that impact testing procedures, like the complexity of the project, potential product risks, availability of stakeholders, and so on.
- Design. During this phase, you decide how you conduct the test and specify detailed conditions. This also includes creating metrics for requirement traceability and test coverage.
- Implementation. During this phase, test cases are created.
- Execution. That’s where the actual testing takes place and metrics are being taken.
- Conclusion. During this phase, the results of the execution are analyzed, and measures are taken if necessary.
- Closure. This phase takes place when the software has been tested and found satisfying.
As you see, this process is sophisticated, and it can address parts of the product as well as the entire product. This approach may be harder to fulfill, but it grants better results as bugs and issues are removed along with development, not after it.
Benefits of STLC
Single-testing phase means that testers have to deal with an already shaped software, with all its elements completed. Finding any bug or misfunction would require reviewing the whole work. On the contrary, STLC detects bugs as the development goes, so much fewer bugs make it to the end. When developers add new features, they don’t need to worry about existing bugs or unmet requirements regarding previous ones. Testing does the job.
In addition, STLC and SDLC need to be synced, which helps to shape the entire development schedule. They can take place in parallel, or STLC may be included in SDLC as its integral part. Regardless of it, this integration makes the project work better manageable.
Popularity of STLC
As the development of software products became too complicated to be made by one-man teams, it started requiring more thorough testing. And, as the products themselves are more sophisticated, there are more weaknesses and vulnerabilities that are better shut down before the product is released. STLC practice gets this job done better.
Better Lifecycles Through Skills
As the process is now complicated, it takes a team of professionals to fulfill this job. It makes sense to form your own team if your company is seriously into software development, with constant updates for your main course or new projects. Otherwise, you can outsource this job and get better results with a third-party testing crew.
