Tips and Strategies for software testing services

Testing Software Services: The Best Strategies

Some of the best practices for software testers:

1) The test results need to be analyzed thoroughly and should not be ignored. Troubleshooting the failed attempts are crucial too as it might lead to eventual success. Also providing solutions to bugs which are stored in logs is also important.

2) It is helpful to maximize the test coverage while on a test while providing software testing services to a client.

3) For ensuring maximum test coverage in software application testing, using application under test (AUT) for breaking into smaller functional modules is useful. Break them in to smaller parts if possible, and write test cases for these modules.

4) It is beneficial to write test cases for intended functionality i.e. for valid conditions first and then invalid conditions.

5) Be positive in finding out bugs in the program. Don't take it beforehand that the program is free from bugs. Go with the intention and one might even find the subtle mistakes which could have been overlooked.

6) Write your test cases in requirement analysis and design phase itself. This way you can ensure all the requirements are testable.

7) After requirement testing, try to do some negative software testing on the application that is for what it is not supposed to do.

8) Always note down the new terms while conducting tests of an application and during the creation of the final test release report.

9) Keep developers away from test environment to detect any possible configuration changes which might get missed in the release or deployment document.

Software testing services — the prevailing trends

According to recent facts, the US Government statistics reported that $59.5 billion was lost annually due to software bugs. It is estimated that at least $22.2 billion could have been saved if the apps were properly tested and deployed.

It has also been observed that some companies prefer to fell the first axe on IT budget especially the testing resources which in turn affect the quality of the product internally. Faced with intense competition, most organizations regard testing to be the first unnecessary arm of IT which can be axed. This is not true as the overall product might turn out to be faulty and bring in even more losses than the overall cost involved in testing.

A study conducted by AMR Research, Boston revealed that offshore Software product testing saves companies up to 75% in in-house costs. Also, the study ranked services from countries like India to be great qualitatively while countries are also focusing on upping their performance and quality levels. Software testing services are crucial in fixing defects and though it takes up nearly 50% of the total development cost for software development, it cannot be ignored amidst tough competition.

Software Processes which are part of the Software Testing Life Cycle:

• Test Maintenance: Tracking and analysis primarily are part of test maintenance and there are various tools involved including Rational Test Manager which are used to help out the process.

• Test Automation: Test automation consists of automated tools for creation of test cases and their analysis. Testing on e-commerce applications also called e-testing is also a part of test automation.

• Defect Management: Defect management involves tracking & analysis of the defects found during the testing phase. This process requires tools like Rational ClearQuest & other bug and defect tracking tools.

• Test Environment Management: The setup and configuration of a test environment is important for the process of software testing. Virtualization tools are used to ensure perfect environment replications and timely deployment of the Test Lab.

There are a plethora of Software testing types and processes including functional testing, automated testing, black box testing, etc along with different approaches. It primarily depends on the approach taken by the client for software development which decides whether testing has to be performed throughout or just as a phase in the software development cycle. One can opt for a QA analyst or offshore software testing providers or just hire a virtual team of testers along with their own set of in-house team of developers.

Navigating The Shifts In Computing Infrastructure Markets:

Important trends are surfacing in computing infrastructure markets that will cause vendor strategists to take a fresh look at new buyer behavior, shifts in business models, and adoption of emerging technologies. A survey clearly shows that buyers of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud services in end user companies are split into two distinct segments: informal and formal. Informal buyers are meeting business needs for new-style workloads (typically session and compute-intensive apps), while formal IaaS cloud buyers are driven by a conservative, IT outsourcing-style approach for transaction apps that leads them to focus most on expanding their virtualization and automation capabilities in pursuit of the internal cloud ideal. Overall, we learned that end user buyers are increasing their influence on infrastructure spend relative to IT in cloud IaaS and in handhelds, that buyers are responding to specific cloud storage solutions and not generic cloud storage offerings, and that the diversity of infrastructure environments is increasing in servers and in client devices.

Mobile Applications Will Empower Enterprise Business Processes

Mobile applications for business use are receiving a great deal of attention from package application software vendors and considerable interest from business process professionals. But other than email and customer-facing mobile solutions, business use remains low — use cases are limited primarily to field-based sales and service processes, and the applications are often custom-built to a single device platform. The opportunity to deploy mobile applications for enterprise business processes will change dramatically within the next two to three years. Rapidly evolving mobile technology, creating a frenzy of consumer adoption, will migrate to business use quickly, but challenges remain for buyers. As vendors ramp up the supply of commercial-grade mobile application packages to extend business processes and integrate with corporate ERP and CRM solutions, customers will not automatically get on-board. Value scenarios, pricing, distribution, and technology stability must settle before large-scale adoption occurs. Business process professionals and their IT colleagues need to consider what types of mobile apps can deliver business value to their organizations and what is necessary to make the technology work effectively.

Justifying Your Cloud Investment: Web Sites

It's one thing to say infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals need to invest in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud computing; it's quite another to justify the financial and resource commitments. This requires a business case that validates the investment on grounds of business empowerment, cost savings, or faster time-to-market. Positive return on investment (ROI) from cloud computing can't be achieved as a blanket business case because the benefits of cloud computing vary based on the application use case. This report examines the case for deploying Web sites onto an IaaS cloud computing environment. Agility is a common cloud advantage, and this translates into faster time-to-resources for application development and operations professionals. But business justification only comes from ensuring the right fit between the applications and the cloud service, and the right IT ops protections and processes.