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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 test ...

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 ...

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 ...

Everyone who uses modern technologies has encountered errors and software failures. While in most cases the programmers' mistakes are not too serious, some IT failures can have truly horrific consequences. The other aspect is the price the breached organizations pay. According to the RiskIQ’s report, security breaches alone cost major companies as much as $25 per minute, while crypto-companies may lose almost $2000 a minute due to cybercrime. We have collected some of the most memorable examples of software failures from recent years (with many well-known brands involved) to show how severe the results can be and why preventive measures (such as extensive software testing) are truly required. Data Loss at GitLab Two years ago a well-known code collaboration platform GitLab experienced a severe data loss which appeared to be one of the major outages in the IT world. GitLab originally used only one database server, but decided to test a solution using two servers. Their plan was to copy the data from the production environment to the test environment.  In the process the automatic mechanisms began to remove accounts from the database which were identified as dangerous. As a result of increased traffic, the data copying process began to slow down and then stopped completely due to data discrepancies. To add insult to injury, information from the production database was removed during the copying process.  After several attempts to resume the process, one of the employees decided to delete the test base and start the process again but accidentally deleted the production base. What made things even worse is that the directory holding the copies was empty too — the backups had not been made for a long time due to a configuration error. What meant to be a standard procedure resulted in an 18-hour outage while the 300 GB of customer data was lost. According to the GitLab’s estimates, the company has lost data on at least 5,000 new projects, 5,000 comments, and 700 users. The company approach to this failure deserves respect. Gitlab explained in detail what happened, broadcasted the restoration procedure on YouTube and published a list of improvements to ensure that this trouble would never happen again. But as they say — the damage is done. British Airways "technical issue" This summer the flag carrier airline of the UK — British Airways — reported an IT system issue that resulted in the delay of hundreds of flights in the UK, ...

Probably anyone who is connected to software development has heard about technical debt. But both salespeople, account managers and probably even CEOs rarely understand what tech debt means, how to measure technical debt, as well as the necessity to pay it. According to Claranet survey, 48% of 100 IT decision-makers from the UK, say that their non - technical coworkers have no idea about the financial impact of tech debt.  At the same time, the risks of not resolving technical debt must be clear not only to developers but also to other members of the team. This will help to acknowledge the need for changes and provide an understanding of why not every feature/project can be implemented quickly. But the question remains — how to explain tech debt to a non-technical audience? How can we define Tech debt? Technical debt or code debt is a metaphor that refers to all consequences that arise due to poorly written code and compromises in the development. This concept, in particular, includes the extra effort that has to be done to improve the software or to add additional functionality. Probably the best way to explain the term "technical debt" is with the help of an analogy. “I like very much the definition of technical debt provided by Wikipedia: technical debt can be compared to monetary debt. What does it mean? If technical debt is not repaid, it can accumulate 'interest', making it harder to implement changes later on. It's the best definition that was coined by tech specialist (American programmer Ward Cunningham) to justify refactoring costs in front of the CFO of a company,” says Alex Gostev, Project Portfolio Manager at QArea. It is quite easy to explain the concept of tech debt to business owners. It is like taking a credit. For example, you can take out a loan to open a new office for the company. But if you take that credit to carry out this plan, the interest occurs. In other words, you will pay more in the long run. Some metaphoric parallels with real-life can also be a useful tool for explaining tech debt issues to non-tech specialists. We can talk about technical debt as of some mess in the house, for example in the kitchen area. Imagine that you have cooked your dinner you decide to leave the kitchen without cleaning up. You continue to do it every day and at some point the kitchen (read "software") becomes really chaotic so it is impossible to cook (read "add new features") there anymore. Sometimes it is better to ...

Nothing in this world is perfect. Neither is code. Sometimes the pressure to deliver fast results leads to coding shortcuts. Sometimes developers can't find the right solution immediately and sometimes they are too lazy to do that. One day they misread the requirements, and the other - the requirements are changed in the process. But what does it have in common with the technical debt? What is tech debt? The term “technical debt” was first introduced by an American agile activist Ward Cunningham in 1992. Tech debt is a metaphor that describes the consequences of immature code. We can say that tech debt appears when developers —  consciously or unconsciously —  make imperfect decisions. This can lead to extra work in the future that results in an additional cost for the company. In other words, when those decisions are made you take a “technical loan” and will have to pay the interest later. According to the Agile Alliance, bugs, errors, and duplication in platform architecture are just some examples of failures that can cause tech debt. Each of them and especially their combination will have a negative impact on the company's productivity and profitability. Therefore, it is definitely not enough to know that tech debt exists, it is necessary to measure technical debt and understand how to deal with it. How to measure tech debt? Properly managed, technical debt is safe. Moreover, it allows to deliver valuable products faster and helps your business grow. And on the contrary, gone-rabid-technical-debt can paralyze your projects and turn into big trouble for your company. Luckily there are ways to keep it under control. Develop agile approach to Tech debt The first step of keeping tech debt under control is the ability to create a proper attitude towards it. Your team should be aware of technical debt and be ready to make their contribution to minimizing its negative consequences. The developers should be responsive and report the technical debt on a regular basis. The team leadership for its part must be ready to invest its time and effort into managing technical debt and take actions if needed. Watch your technical debt According to the survey conducted by the Chalmers University of Technology, the University of Oslo, and the Research Team Barcelona, backlogs and static analyzers allow to decrease the management overhead by 7%. Technical debt can be also maintained in a backlog of a tracker system such as JIRA. It is ...