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One of the most essential steps of any software development project is testing. If this process is skipped, the results may be disastrous - both for the project and for the company. But when should software undergo testing? It seems logical to test the project when it is completed. However, the power of the classic test procedure is limited. Overengineering, rigid design, testability issues - are just a few problems you may face if you write the code first and test the implementation later. Luckily, there is a way to tackle such challenges and it is called - Test driven development. What is TDD or test driven development? TDD is short for Test Driven Development and it refers to the design paradigm where software component testing is used to guide the entire development process. In order to understand how TDD works, first, it is better to define one of its important concepts - unit testing. What is software unit testing? Unit testing is a method that breaks code into small and isolated units. The main objective of unit testing is to evaluate the behavior of each component independently to verify that they function correctly. The unit tests are usually performed by developers but can also be done by Quality managers. Some software developers believe that unit tests are a waste of time, yet practice shows that it is just the opposite. In fact, ignoring unit tests results in higher error fixing costs during system testing, integration testing, and beta testing stages. At the same time, unit-tests allow detecting the bugs and errors in the early stages of the development life cycle, thus saving you both time and money in the future. What is TDD?  Test-driven development is a software development technique in which unit tests are the most important concern. In a nutshell, test-driven development is all about the “test-first” approach which means the tests are written before the code is actually implemented. It doesn't matter if we talk about test driven development in python or test driven development in java, the TDD programming practice always aims at writing clean code that works. We can think of TDD as a design strategy. Because the test is written first, the interface of the component to be tested is already used before it actually exists. Therefore, developers get feedback about the usability of the design as soon as possible. There are three principles of TDD: It is not allowed to write any production code unless it is to make a failing unit ...

Testing is an essential part and success factor of the software development process. If the test management is carried out correctly, tests can help to avoid software errors and ensure a high quality of the product. There are a lot of testing practices to make sure that your solution works correctly and can be used easily across multiple environments and platforms. These methods are usually divided into functional and non-functional tests. Functional testing and non functional testing: What is that all about? Functional testing is a type of testing that focuses on the business requirements of the software product. The main idea behind functional testing is to ensure that each functionality of software works as specified in the requirement documents. These types of tests focus only on checking the results of operations, completely bypassing the intermediate states of the system during their execution. Functional tests chiefly involve black box testing techniques, where you don't peer into internal code structure and rely mainly on specifications. Non-functional testing is a testing technique that focuses on the evaluation of the non-functional aspects of the system. It checks the parameters that are not tested in functional tests, such as performance, usability, reliability, etc. Non-functional tests are as important as functional tests as they help to understand how the system works. The main goal of this type of testing is to provide the best experience to the end-users of the software product.  What are the functional testing types? Since functional testing tests is a methodology that examines various parameters of a software product, different types of functional tests are performed. Let’s have a look at some of them: Unit tests Unit testing is the first level of testing which is usually performed by developers. This process ensures that individual components of a software are functional at the code level and react as expected. Unit tests can be performed manually, but automating the process speeds deployment cycles and extends test coverage. Integration tests Integration tests are designed to determine if independently developed components of software work properly when they are connected to each other. Integration tests ensure that communication between different units runs smoothly. Those tests try to uncover different types of errors such as incompatibilities in the message or data formats as well as invalid input or output ...

Why your Project Needs UI/UX Testing This article was born out of an active discussion that sparked during one of our retrospective meetings. Our team was discussing the issues that our clients often bring up during calls: what is the most important type of testing today? Which testing activities require particular attention from human testers? In other words — which tests can’t be skipped and must be done by an attentive testing specialist? Many experts focus on more or less similar tests, only adapting the definitions in accordance with the respective target audience. In this article, we won't name all the testing types once again, but we’ll talk about the most important one — UI/UX testing. So, what is UI testing? User interface testing (UI testing) is a type of testing in which testers need to make sure that all buttons, fields, labels, and other items on the screen work as specified. UI testing involves checking screens with controls, such as toolbars, colors, fonts, sizes, buttons, icons, etc., and how they respond to the user input. Simply put, with the help of UI testing we see how an application, website, or software will interact with the end-user. Essentially, User Interface testing checks how the tested product performs based on the following criteria: Ease of use Consistency and logic Accessibility Compatibility In order to achieve effective results during UI testing, the tester must answer at least two important questions:  Are all features of the tested software clear and easy to use? Can a user navigate through the app without experiencing system errors or malfunctions? There’s also a bonus question:   3.   Will the interface guide users towards making the right decisions? Usually, User Interface testing is applied to end products, but I suggest making it an integral part of testing throughout the entire product development process.  Small changes made at any stage of the development can have an disproportionately big impact on the UI.  So, it is important to configure the user interface in accordance with these changes and provide feedback that is received during the testing sessions. It turns out that even a minor issue such as lack of a button or a typing error can lead to a huge problem in the overall design. It goes without saying that it is much cheaper to fix UI bugs at the development stage. But unfortunately, bugs are sometimes missed, so companies have to deal with fixing them after the product is ...

Software is becoming more and more complex, while the clients' demands grow and the software development market becomes more competitive. Development teams have to deliver solutions faster without sacrificing the quality of the product. Such conditions require a thoroughly thought-out approach to software engineering. How to find it? A part of the answer lies in the introduction of the development testing processes. What is software development testing? Development testing is an approach that involves a set of defect prevention and detection techniques during the software development process. This process, often performed by testing and software development teams, helps to detect bugs and errors at an early stage of the project development and therefore reduce the defect elimination costs in the future. Development testing also minimizes the risk of expensive software failures and security issues. It is worth mentioning that by using development testing methodology you can shorten your time to market thus get a competitive advantage and provide better customer experience.  In other words, development testing is a complex process aimed at minimizing development risks, time, and costs. Development testing complements traditional software testing and transforms testing processes from reactive to a proactive one. What are the software testing strategies for software development? Development testing may include different practices such as unit testing, static code analysis, metrics analysis, data flow analysis, code coverage, peer code reviews, and traceability. Let's have a look at what each of them means: Code coverage The code coverage is a metric that indicates how many source files, functions and lines of code are covered by tests. Code coverage analysis demonstrates that the software product has been widely tested for defects and should be relatively error-free. There are different code coverage metrics for this purpose, such as function coverage, statement coverage, branch coverage, condition coverage, parameter value coverage, and сyclomatic сomplexity. Unit testing Software unit testing is a development and testing approach that allows checking if a particular block of code, called “unit”, works as intended. Unit tests are normally automated tests that run periodically and help development teams to find the defects, improve the quality of the code and simplify the debugging process. In order to create unit tests quickly and easily different ...

TestFort’s Ukrainian offices have temporarily transitioned to remote work. This has been done as a preventative measure amid the spread of the COVID-19 virus to keep our QA engineers safe and healthy. All of our managers, software testers, and QA engineers are fully prepared for remote work. Their remote server access, personal computers, as well as networking and communication workflows have been made in advance.  Furthermore, many departments and individual teams have been implementing remote work as a regular practice within their day-to-day operations.  “Remote work arrangements have been set in place since August, 2019 as an effort to ensure our testing teams’ ISO 27001 compliance,” says Oleg Sivograkov, COO of TestFort. “The transition of our testers to remote work will have little to no impact on their work and our daily operations.”  All physical testing devices have been distributed to the QA engineers and testers that need them. For any individual devices that are required for multiple projects, safe handoff processes have been organized, and clients have been informed about potential delays for individual tests.  We’d like to thank our clients for their understanding and our team for being able to transition to remote work so quickly and smoothly.

Software unit testing: What is it? Why is it important? It is hard to overestimate the importance of software quality. A single error can have a huge negative impact on your entire business. If bug issues are not addressed efficiently, it may result in everything from an endless cycle of fixes to a completely destroyed reputation of your company. Effective testing strategies help to minimize such risks by ensuring the quality of the released product. There are many testing practices you can choose to build a great software solution. One of the basic but effective testing techniques to make sure that your product works properly is called unit testing. What is unit testing and what are the unit testing frameworks? Unit testing (sometimes called module testing or component testing) is a technique for testing the smallest testable component of your code (unit) to ensure that it performs as intended. The basic feature of unit testing is the isolation - a unit test only performs a specific function and excludes all external influences, such as dependencies between units, calls to other functions, etc The unit testing process can be done manually, but developers usually use unit testing tools to facilitate the process, so they can focus on more complex tasks such as defining the test cases. For almost all programming languages there is a suitable unit test software that reads the source text and reviews it for errors. For example, there are JUnit for the Java programming language, CUnit for the C programming language, or JSUnit for the JavaScript programming language. In some languages, the test framework is already an integral part of its standard library. For example, Python’s library includes a module called unittest which is used to test the components of the code. The benefits of unit testing in software development Unit testing brings a lot of benefits to the development process. This technique allows examining the components of the software separately to make sure that each performs as expected. With the help of unit testing, you can localize every little mistake quickly and accurately as well as simplify the debugging process if any issue occurs. Moreover, unit tests give the ability to detect errors at an early stage of the development process before it reaches QA or end-users. It should be also noted that this technique helps to save time and costs in terms of future developments. The main idea of unit tests lies in improving the quality of the ...

In today's fast-paced software world, quick delivery of the product is often not an option but a necessity. Building software also requires a high level of flexibility in responding to the constantly changing market trends and customers’ demands. The problem is that with traditional project management, a quick change of plans inevitably leads to higher costs or longer project duration. Luckily there are agile methods that allow us to avoid such pitfalls. This refers not only to software development but also to testing processes. What is Agile testing? Agile in software development is an approach that focuses on the people performing their work and their cooperation aimed at delivering the right product to the customer. It is an iterative development process that creates requirements through constant collaboration between the client and cross-functional self-organizing teams. Agile testing is a practice that follows the rules of agile development and helps create solutions tailored to customer needs. What do we understand by agile testing process? The approach to software testing in an agile environment is not very different from the  traditional practices. Still, there are few clear distinctions in the process. First, testing in Agile is not a separate activity but an essential part of the development process which is considered to be a preventative measure. This means that the tests have to be performed much more frequently and in sprints. At the end of each sprint, which usually lasts from one to two weeks, the fully-tested software should be available, which is then delivered to the customer. All issues discovered during the tests are recorded and evaluated in retrospect, which further increases the quality and the test coverage achieved. It is essential for all relevant tests, such as unit, functional or performance tests, to be planned in advance and implemented at all levels. This helps to detect and fix the problems in a timely manner. It should be mentioned that automating test procedures allows running the tests much more often - like several times a day - and minimizing the feedback cycle. It is important to use automated regression tests in an agile environment. This type of testing ensures that the new functionality of the product (which is being continuously built) does not introduce new bugs and that the previous functionality works as intended. One of the most important activities in an agile environment is conducting the ...

At the most basic level, your requirements for a software testing outsourcing company will revolve around budget, qualifications, availability, and process management. The right choice will influence the company plans to deliver a new product to the market in a short time. Efficient cooperation will lead to a high level of services and expertise of each remote team member. How to find a reliable remote company? How to make the right choice? We’ve prepared a short guide for you on what to do to find a good QA company. Consider outsourcing to Eastern Europe An essential factor of working with QA outsourcing companies is their location.  Time zone differences will dictate when and how you communicate.  Overall development culture will determine whether your remote testers gel well with your in-house developers. Finally, the country’s economy and infrastructure will dictate the cost of working with your outsourcing partner. Working with partners from Eastern Europe provides the best balance of all three factors. Costs of testing in Eastern Europe are significantly lower than those in the EU and US, while the QA engineers themselves can sometimes outperform western competitors. All countries in Eastern Europe are easy to travel to, and the time difference is seldom a problem. There are always at least 2 hours of overlap between Ukrainian testing companies and the Silicon Valley, while with Polish companies that overlap is increased to 3 hours. The most appealing advantage is a big number of IT experts in this location. You will find a solid number of software testing outsourcing companies in Ukraine and neighbouring countries. By the way, Ukraine was recognized as the “Offshoring Destination of the Year” by Global Sourcing Association (GSA) in 2017. What to check to find the best outsourcing software testing companies? Here are the primary steps to choosing a remote QA company: Check their portfolio: If the company has worked over similar projects that you have, used technologies that you are interested in, you can add it to the list of candidates for further consideration. Check hourly rates: You will pay more for the QA services if you work with a team from the US than from Eastern Europe. The cost shouldn’t be the only criteria for making a decision but it’s worth thinking about. Years on the market: If the company has been providing QA services for a few years, you can add it to the list of reliable companies. Flexibility: It’s good to ...

Why You Need QA and How It Can Save Your Money The IT industry’s default management method is (mostly) Agile. One sprint can last for about two weeks and contains a specific list of tasks to be done. Every sprint should comprise five steps of the software testing lifecycle, and some pieces of requirements should be implemented. Quality assurance needs to be an integral part of every single one of those sprints. Good QA can save your business. Good QA introduced at an early stage of development can even help your business grow faster.  Here’s how you can help your business succeed in the long run with good QA as a foundational part of your development process.  Why do you need a QA engineer? Here are thirteen core responsibilities of the QA engineers: Analysis and clarification of requirements with the customer or business analysts; Planning the testing process; Writing test cases (test scripts); Functional testing; Identification of problem areas, their inclusion in the tracking system; Discussion of fixes with developers; Tracking the life cycle of errors; Re-test of fixed defects; Testing analysis; Optimization of the testing process; Analysis of teamwork processes; Process improvement; Maintenance of test documentation. What role does QA play in development? To find out more about the importance of testing and how to do quality assurance, you can have a look at the significant issues that the role of QA is responsible for. Prerequisites for the software: We should realize what we are developing and testing, and the degree of this awareness has to be presented in figures. Potential risks or missed problems at the specification level can lead to the most serious and expensive errors. The quality of the product: It’s necessary to evaluate the attributes of development and program to make forecasts and assess risks. You should know how good and reliable the product is. You should rely not only on the presence or absence of errors found but just predicting whether there are many possible problems. Features of the QA team: A qualified QA team lead will help the team manage the testing process, plan tests to meet specified production timings, and make sure that the current QA team’s capabilities match the demands of the project. The qualification of the team: In addition to the quality of the product itself, you need to measure the effectiveness of the QA process and the team. To continually optimize and improve the ...

The huge demand for high-quality products created in the shortest time possible made testing a critical success factor of the software development process. Because of the continually evolving technology and competitive market QA specialists are in constant search of new relevant testing techniques, so they can stay relevant and meet the rising customer demands. As a result, new approaches are steadily emerging. Here are some of the most important software testing trends to watch for in 2020. Testing for Agile & DevOps Agile and DevOps should be definitely mentioned among some of the most popular concepts in software development. Since both DevOps and Agile practitioners work on improving the quality of the products, testing becomes a common area of interest for two groups. In the competitive software development world more and more companies choose popular agile methodologies which, in turn, has an impact on testing practices. In particular, agile methodology ensures that testing becomes an inevitable part of the development process rather than a separate stage. At the same time, DevOps which implements a continuous improvement cycle is aimed at reducing the duration of the testing processes. In the future more and more companies will adopt DevOps philosophy to improve the quality of released products which will have a huge impact on how the testing is done. Big Data Testing Big data continues to gain momentum. According to the Mordor Intelligence report, the Big data technology and service market will grow from 23.1 billion dollars in 2018 to 79.5 billion dollars in 2024. While many companies work with Big data today, managing large amounts of information remains a challenging task, so does the testing of Big data. In order to ensure the high quality of Big data, it cannot be tested only with the help of traditional techniques, you need a well-thought-out approach. In particular, this implies a great emphasis on performance testing and functional testing of applications and software. Data quality is also a critical factor when testing big data, thus it should be always verified before the testing process begins. Undoubtedly, testing plays an important role in Big data systems and the implementation of the right Big data testing strategy can provide a lot of benefits for the business. This includes improving data accuracy, minimizing the losses, facilitating business decisions and strategizing. That’s why it is easy to see that big data services will ...