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Compliance with established requirements, standards, and
procedures is evaluated through process monitoring, product evaluation, audits,
and testing. Quality Assurance department at gallops ensures that the
management and engineering efforts result in a product that meets all of its
requirements.
Specific project characteristics and risks influence Quality
Assurance needs and every quality assurance plan is tailored to its project.
Characteristics that are considered include mission criticality of the project,
schedule and budget, size and complexity of the product to be produced, and
size and organizational complexity of the development staff.
Software testing verifies that the software meets its
requirements and that it is complete and ready for delivery.
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Assure the quality of client deliverables.
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Design, assemble, and execute a full testing lifecycle.
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Confirm the full functional capabilities of the final product.
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Confirm stability and performance (response time, etc.) of the final product.
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Confirm that deliverables meet client expectations/requirements.
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Report, document and verify code and design defects.
The first products monitored by QA are the project's standards
and procedures. QA assures that clear and achievable standards exist and then
evaluates compliance of the software product to the established standards.
Functional and technical document evaluations follow. This ensures that the
software product reflects the requirements and standards as identified in the
management plan.
QA assures Verification and Validation (V&V) activities by
monitoring and participating in product reviews, inspections, and walk-through.
A review looks at the overall picture of the product being developed to see if
it satisfies its requirements. In formal reviews, actual work done is compared
with established standards. Reviews are part of the development process, and
they should be conducted at the end of each phase of the life-cycle to identify
problems and determine whether the interim product meets all applicable
requirements. The results of the review should provide a ready/not-ready
decision to begin the next phase. Although the decision to proceed is a
management decision, QA is responsible for advising management and
participating in the decision.
There are many different types of tests that can be executed
depending on the objectives of the test engineer. Some examples include the
following:
- • Error testing
This testing verifies the product’s responses
to error conditions. These tests ensure that the responses are meaningful,
correct, and may include the display of context-sensitive, error-specific help
screens. Reviewing error message lists may help to identify each error which
can be generated by a specific screen or module.
- • Stress testing
This testing measures the system’s response to
large amounts of data. This may include single-users manipulating large sets of
data, or multiple machines running the application simultaneously.
- • White-box testing
This testing places the focus on the
internal structure of the software. Tests are designed using the code and the
functional spec as inputs.
- • Black-box testing
This type of testing views the software
from the end-user perspective, and is unaware of the underlying code.
- • Distributed testing
This may include verification of startup data,
modifications to tables, verification that cascading deletes are correct, and
that dependencies between database tables are correct.
- • Multi-user testing
This type of testing includes concurrency
tests which verify the interaction of two simultaneous users on two separate
machines. For example, if one user locks a record, a second user may receive an
error message when attempting to lock the same record. Stress testing verifies
the response of the system when a large number of users are connected to the
database. Other types of tests verify that a process on one machine is capable
of initiating a process on another machine.
We typically do our testing at the following four levels:
- • Testing
Examines each object, verifying specific properties of the
object, including, state, size, location, contents, type, etc. Tests might also
verify that the object is functioning according to standard behavior.
- • Unit testing
Examines the behavior of a group of objects, which together
provide a specific feature for the end-user. Often, unit tests look at a dialog
as a collection of objects, and the functionality provided by the dialog is
verified by these tests. Unit tests verify the interaction between objects.
- • Integration testing
Examines how groups of dialogs and screens function
together. Typically, common user scenarios are verified through these tests.
- • System testing
Examines how the software interacts with other software
products within the software environment. Connectivity product testing, such as
TCP/IP or other network protocol testing are examples of system tests.
The outputs of the integration and test stage include an integrated set of
software along with the online help file, an online help system, and the
product release document.
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