Category: Testing Tutorials

A lot of people get confused when the words, ‘Agile’ and ‘Kanban’ are mentioned. While some have never heard those words all their lives, few seem to have, but do not quite understand the differences between the two. Well, this post will try and make some clarifications about them. Here is an overview about the difference between Agile Vs Kanban and it the use of Kanban with Agile in testing & development. Also refer the PDF version of this tutorial.

Agile is a deviation from the traditional way of management, which though has been embraced for a long time, actually slows software development and testing processes. Agile remains the future of software development. However, change is always taken with skepticism at first; so, a lot of people still find it difficult to embrace this modern technology.

What exactly is Agile?

The Agile manifesto defines Agile as an idea supported by a set of values and beliefs. It identifies a target culture that is used to deliver software successfully. Agile is seen by some, as a family of processes.

Today, Agile software development teams are able to make things faster by matching the amount of work that is in progress to the capacity of the team. This makes it possible for teams to have more flexible planning options, a focus that is clearer, transparency, and faster output. The Agile practice has brought more success to software development teams. A proper understanding of how the basic things work helps software teams to commence practice with little or no overhead.

What is Kanban?

Kanban is a method applied in the management of knowledge work which creates a balance between the demand for work to be done and the capacity available for the new work to be started. It visualizes work items that are non-tangible in order to enable all participants to have a view of the individual items’ progress, and the process from when a task is defined to when it is delivered to the customer. Team members rather “pull” work based on their capacity, than “pushing” the work into the process when requested.

When it comes to using Kanban for software development, Kanban can be seen then, as a visual process-management system that assists in making decisions regarding what should be produced, when it should be produced, and how it should be produced.  The method is more general because one can apply it to any professional service, where work outcome is intangible instead of being physical. The method was started by Toyota in the late 1940s, as they sought to optimize their engineering processes.

Where Agile and Kanban Fuse

Agile teams, today adopt Kanban as one of their most popular software development methodologies. Agile adopts Kanban because of the numerous advantages that Kanban presents in planning tasks and in helping the team to properly execute them.

Some of the advantages that Kanban offers the Agile team include Planning flexibility, Reduced bottlenecks, Continuous delivery, Shortened cycle times, and Visual metrics. All these will help make software development and delivery effortless.

Conclusion

Agile is a system put in place to facilitate fast product delivery, ensuring that quality is not compromised. But adding Kanban to Agile makes it even more effective. If you have not tried these software development processes, it is time to do so and see how much differences they offer.

As the world of software development keeps growing, developers are gradually leaning toward the use of agile testing as the preferred method of testing and executing their projects. Agile involves testing in scrum.Here is an overview about Agile Scrum testing and its PDF version Guide.

How does the Scrum Testing work?

In Scrum, tasks are divided into small time frames otherwise known as time boxes. This is to allow for the delivery of specific features in the release so that after each iteration, the working software build can be delivered. The software builds are usually done incrementally (when it comes to adding features). But the final build is equipped with all the features the customer would need. The Agile methodology has some basic characteristics and they include:

• It entails the active involvement of all the stakeholders or users
• Decisions are usually made by the project team
• It focuses on delivering products frequently
• Testing is done throughout the lifecycle of the project
• They capture requirements at a high level
• Iterations are developed through small, incremental releases
• Graduation to the next iteration means that each feature has to be completed first
• It is an iterative development technology that needs the cooperation between the self-organizing team and the customer for substantive progress to be made.

Meetings Involved

• Sprint Planning: In this meeting, the subject of discussion is the sprint backlog which centers on number of user stories, project scope, and other important issues. Activities are planned and the acceptance criteria for each sprint are also defined.
• Daily Review: This is necessary to get the progress of the development and testing. It makes everything clear regarding the risks or problems associated with the development or testing stage.
• Sprint Review meeting: At the end of each sprint, customers are presented with deliverables and the product is then developed based on mutual consent.
• Sprint Retrospective meeting: This is the period of evaluation to know what went well and where improvements are needed.

Role of a tester in Scrum

The following are the roles of a tester in scrum:

• Discuss and understand the story of each user with the stakeholders before making a decision on the criteria for acceptance of same
• Ensure the satisfaction of customers through the early delivery of software with high quality, giving highest priority to continuous delivery
• Ensuring cooperation between developers, testers, and business people all through the project
• Be adaptable to any kind of change
• Test cases need to be developed in accordance with the criteria for accepting the story; this needs to be adjusted whenever the story changes
• QA has to track the testing progress each day and ensure regular feedback
• The level of story has to be estimated and time assigned for each story
• Iteratively deliver software with high quality, from a few weeks to a few months

Challenges of Agile Scrum

Agile Scrum is not without its own challenges. Chief among the challenges are:

• There is need to estimate the testing effort for each user
• Limitation in environment and resources, as well as team’s capacity
• Team direction may be misinterpreted if customers do not understand the requirements
• It requires dynamic change in volume and speed
• There are simultaneous planning and test execution
• Frequent code changes increase the risk of regression

Conclusion

Agile and Scrum testing is a necessary test that you need to subject your software to before it is approved for the market. Its purpose is to ensure that all is well and that users’ specifications are met.

Lean software testing is a testing method with the primary objective of building software that has improvement as its main purpose, as well as reducing risk.  Their primary focal point is to discover waste and delays in any testing, and proffer a working solution to them. They have speed, quality and customer alignment at the back of the mind when developing a system or software. Here is quick introduction about Agile & lean testing & pdf tutorial.

Core values of lean

Lean other known as ‘Lean Manufacturing’ has some core values which give it an edge over any other software testing systems. The core values include:

• To eradicate waste
• Build in quality
• Create knowledge
• Defer commitment
• Fast delivery
• Respect for people
• Optimize the whole

Agile was actually built on the principles of Lean and that is the reason why it working and it’s quite reliable. Agile simply works on the premise that any system that must function effectively and be trusted must have workable and fool-proof principles.

Agile

Agile is a set of principles and values that are laid down in the Agile manifesto. The manifesto was formulated to checkmate the popular heavyweight methodologies that were in some ways hindering the ideal ways of doing software projects. The idea thing is to create software that is helpful to the customer.

The science behind LEAN is responsible for the smooth working that Agile values and principles enjoy today. Without the foundation of lean, there will be no Agile. Those principles are:

• Customer satisfaction should be of highest priority
• Changing requirements must be welcome
• Software should be delivered frequently
• Developers and business people need to cooperate daily
• Motivated people should be the pivot on which projects are built
• Face-to-face conversation is best
• Progress measured by working software
• Sustainable development speed
• Uninterrupted attention to technical excellence
• Teams that are self-organizing
• Regular reflection and adaptation

Any project that obeys these principles and values would be seen as being agile. For agile teams to be able to achieve a level of agility, certain preferred practices have to be followed. They include:

• Scrum or Kanban (sometimes, a mixture of both) for “Management Practices”.
• Extreme Programming needed for Technical Practices – new practices are gaining popularity, mostly from lean Startups like Continuous Deployment and Testing in Production

An agile team that is good would always settle for the management and technical practices that they have tested and are sure really works. But a bad team does not care about the workability of practice; they always think they can make things agile themselves.

Conclusion

There is hardly a clear demarcation between Lean and Agile as Agile working principles are based purely on the science of lean. Therefore, for any system that wants to be agile, it should be prepared to inculcate the principles and science that drive agility. Remember that customer is at the core of any testing system and the primary focus of the testing to come with a product that truly satisfies the yearnings of the customer.

Have you just developed any software and you are thinking of how to test it out? Testing your software will lend credence to its authenticity and convince the intended users that the software truly works and could be trusted. There are different levels of testing that your software needs to pass through before it would be released into the market for the general public. So, what are those levels of testing?

Unit testing

The unit testing otherwise known as component testing involves verifying if the various components or specific units of the software truly work. It is intended to make sure that the codes are working and everything would be able to meet the users’ specifications. The least unit test involves the constructors and the destructors. One function could sometimes be subjected to multiple tests. Most times, these tests are carried out by the developers before they hand the software over to the testing team. This test usually helps to detect any software errors early enough in order to reduce risks associated with the development of the software, as well as save time and cost associated with correcting errors in the long run.

Integration testing

Integration testing is about putting together all the units within a program and then testing them to see how they function against a software design. It helps in discovering any defects in the interfaces and the way the integrated components or modules interact. Everything is progressively tested until the software is able to function as a system.

Component interface testing

This is used for testing the handling of data that are passed from one unit to the other or between the system components. It goes further than the full integration testing that those units are exposed to.

System testing

System testing otherwise known as end-to-end testing helps to test a system that is completely integrated, to ensure that its requirements are met. For instance, when doing a system testing, you may need to login, create and edit an entry, send or print results, as well as summary processing of entries before logging off.

Operational Acceptance testing

This is the final level of testing, and it involves checking if the software is ready to be released. At this point, the users have the opportunity to test the software to see if it meets their needs. This stage is necessary because some changes might have been effected in the course of developing the software, which could have been a misinterpretation of the intended purpose. With this final phase of testing, the actual users will have to test it to see if it can take care of their needs. If the software passes the test at this stage, it is then sent to the production unit to produce it for the market.

Conclusion

Software is not just conceived, produced and dumped on the intended users. They are subjected to series of tests to ensure that they meet the basic and specific requirements before they are finally produced for the market. For software to be accepted, it has to first go through the process of testing and approval. Otherwise, the software would not be trusted in terms of performance and security.

TestNG Features, Advantages, Risk,PDF Tutorials

What is TESTNG

This is a testing plan formed in the lines of J unit and N unit where it helps in forming new technology to make it powerful and easier to use. This tutorial helps in better understanding of the framework needed to test the enterprise to deliver best and reliable application result. TestNG is developed to those persons interested in learning the features of TestNG to make it simple and learn with steps where they can understand better and later implement it as a practice.  TestNG is designed to cover all categories of tests: unit, functional, end-to-end, integration, etc. we can take full advantage of TestNG from engineering to quality insurance.

 
Some of the features of TESTNG:

• Glossary
• Test that your code is very much safe
• Dependant methods for application server testing.
• Easy to migrate to Junit.
• Powerful execution model.

 
Advantages of TestNG:

• Annotations are easy to understand in Junit.
• No need for extension of class
• Parallel execution of Selenium test cases is possible in TestNG.
• TestNG supports following three 3 additional setUp/tearDown level: @Before/AfterSuite, @Before/AfterTest and @Before/AfterGroup.
• Information shown visually will be easy for the human mind to understand better where for example, explaining in the form of chart will help people to learn and understand faster. This is so to get what it wanted to be achieved- the final outcome.
• Make sure you do the coding correctly as repetitive work will be boring and there are chances for mistakes to happen.

 
RISKS INVOLVED:

• Unrealistic expectations: one have to be peculiar in what tool to use for certain software. They should have the basic idea about it. In any software when not used properly technical problems may arise and it is very important that one should have the basic knowledge and idea of the tool that they are using for getting better results.
• Underestimation of time, cost and effort: software’s are being used by many companies by a large number of persons in it. Only when used carefully can no technical problems rise. So everyone have to handle in such a way that the tool achieves great results.
• Mostly people underestimate the effort required
• People depend on the tool a lot. Tool is just a software and can do only what is assigned to it. It cannot do everything. The tool can only help you but it is not a human brain to give you all the solutions. A test that takes a very long time to automate and will not be run very often is better done manually.

 
PDF Tutorials

• TestNG Complete Tutorial in PDF
• Selenium Automation setup with TestNG and Eclipse

V-Model Software Development is the the software development process which is an extension of the water fall model is called VModel Software Development. In this process instead of moving in a linear way, the process is bent upwards making it in the form of v shape after the coding is done. This v shape itself represents the relationship between each development life cycle that are associated with the phase of testing. Each phase has to be completed before the beginning of the next one. Testing of a product is planned in a parallel basis with the corresponding phase of development.

VARIOUS PHASES OF V MODEL :

• Low Level Design:Here the actual software components are being designed. Flow chart diagrams, its methods and their relations all comes under this Low Level Design section. Components tests are designed in this phase as well.
• Implementation Phase: Here most of the coding takes place. Once the coding is done, the process again movies up right to the side of V where the test plans developments are put into use now.
• Coding: This is usually at the bottom of the V shaped development process. This model design is converted into codes by the users itself. The full coding is done as the final step of the v shape model which is the result factor of this development.

Advantages of V Shaped model development:

• The usage is simple and easy.
• Less time consuming. Most of the activities like planning, test designing etc happens well before the coding takes place.
• More tracking of defects. The major defects are found at the early stage.
• Avoids downward flow of defects.
• Small type projects are mostly worked well as it is easy to understand more.
• This model has gained acceptance because of its simplicity and straight forwardness.

Disadvantages of V Shaped Model Development:

• Very rigid and least flexible
• Softwares developed during implementation phases and no prototypes are developed or produced for this softwares.
• If anything happens or stops in between then the whole document both testing and requirement are to be updated all over again.
• This is also risky and lot of time is taken.
• Since no prototypes are produced then there are less chance in meeting the customer expectation.

 
PDF Tutorials

• Three Variations on the V Model for System and Software Testing
• Multiple V-model in relation to testing

WHAT IS SOAPUI?

SoapUI is a free and open source Functional Testing solution. It allows you to rapidly and easily creates automated functions, regression and load tests. In case of testing environment, SoapUI supports all test coverage and also supports all the standard protocols and technologies. In this tests you can do how much ever you want and there are no limits to this test as proper results needs to be attained at the end. This brings a complete and simple testing experience to technical and non technical staffs.

SoapUI sits atop the list of open source API tools that are designed for testing some APIs such as SOAP and REST. It is the turn-to tool for many developers who want to get their jobs done easily by using some helpful tools. There are some reasons why SoapUI is the toast of many developers. A good look at some of these reasons will convince you of its importance to you as a developer.

SoapUI Functional Testing

SoapUI Functional Testing is one of the best testing techniques in software development to ensure that an application is developed in conformity with the agreed specifications with the objective of developing a program that will meet the needs of the end users. Regardless of whether you want to create a new TestSuites or add some assertions to an existing TestCases, it is amazingly easy and simple with this tool.

Some of the main features of SoapUI are as follows:

• Web service inspection
• Web service invoking
• Web services developments
• Web services simulation and mocking
• Web services functional, load compliances and security testing.

Features of SoapUI in Detail

1. User-Friendly GUI: Ease of use was one of the several factors considered when developing the GUI of SoapUI. Without a prior knowledge of the GUI, you can find your way around it and do whatever testing you want to do. For instance, creating a SoapUI project is relatively simple. You just click on the File and select New SOAP Project from the menu option. To complete the process, enter a valid file path for WSDL. That’s how easy it is to use the GUI.
2. Easy for Functional Testing: Software testing usually involves the use of test steps, test suites, and test requests. You can take advantage of the simplicity of SoapUI to make your job easy. It has a drag and drop option you can use to create the hypothetical scenario you will use for the test without writing any scripts. After creating a project, you can add the test suites with this application.

The test debugging feature of SoapUI allows the user to monitor the progressive debugging of the application. This will make room for the developer to have a good knowledge of the errors in the program.

3. It supports data-driven testing: SoapUI also eases functional testing by supporting data-driven testing. This makes room for developers to bulk activities such as inserting, updating, or deleting of related testing.
4. Comprehensive reporting: By using SoapUI for functional testing, you can enjoy the opportunity to generate comprehensive reports in any format including HTML, Excel, PDF, and Word. You can also customize the report to satisfy the intended use. You can have easy access to the reports by using the Project window.
5. Contract coverage: SoapUI contains a Test Coverage function that will inform you when you have tested sufficient information or where to shift your attention to in order to enhance your use of time.
6. Analytic: SoapUI has some powerful analytics that will speed up the testing rate and save you some time that will prove useful in other areas of your work. Another feature is the ability to create reports as a part of the analysis and exporting the reports for use whenever you want.
7. Flexibility: SoapUI is open source software that allows others to extend the features of the tool by creating their own SoapUI Plugins. It is a feature that makes the tool one of the best functional testing tools among developers.

These features of SoapUI and much more make functional testing delightful for the testers, contributing to the success of their efforts to rid an application of flaws that will adversely affect its overall performance.

You can avail yourself of the good features of the tool to meticulously test your software as part of a collective effort to ensure better performance.

SoapUI had also got few awards which are-ATI Automation Honors 2009, Info World Best of Open Source Software Award 2008, SOA World Readers’ Choice Award 2007 etc.

Pdf Tutorials

• Agile Web Service and REST Service Testing with soapUI – pdf training guide
• Step by Step Tutorial to Create a WebServices Regression Test

Agile typically refers to a professional tester who embraces changes, collaborates well with the business technical team and understands the concept of software document requirement and to derive them. They are willing to learn about the customer so that they can know what they can do according to the customer needs as per the software requirements.Here it contains Agile testing principles,Methodologies, Advantages , Disadvantages and pdf tutorials for your reference.

 
ADVANTAGES OF AGILE TESTING

• Whole team responsible for the quality. Testing is done after the development is complete but in Agile , the whole team is responsible for the quality of work. They also mixes discipline where you can find one tester working with co ordination with the other developers.
• Here communication also plays an important role as when testers and developers work together in a team they can easily communicate with each other.
• As they are working together in a team, immediate feedbacks can be given where the developer can fix the bug then and there when the code is still fresh in his mind.
• As the coding and testing time is so close to each other, the developer need not have to put in new code to the project as he can fix up the bug problem without any difficulty.
• Agile locks the teams into short sprints letting each team focus on completing a small set of features.
• Since testing is done throughout the software process, testing can’t be cut and also not even much cant be cut. It has to go on in order to avoid the bug that arises.

 
DISADVANTAGES OF AGILE TESTING

• When testing stops in between in the software life cycle, more and more bugs will be introduced and it will be difficult for the developer to clear the whole bug in one time.
• Agile requirements are barely sufficient. This eliminates wasted efforts on deliverables that do not last which saves time and also money. If proper team work and communication is not there between developers and testers, then there will be a clear misunderstanding and will be difficult for team members  that are used to do everything being defined as upfront.
• Flexibility to change ensures the right to delivery of the right product at the correct time. Without the maturity of a strong and clear vision, and the discipline of fixing timescale and trading scope, is potentially very dangerous.

 
PRINCIPLES OF AGILE TESTING

1. Provides continuous feedback. This is needed as he is the person leading the team and to improve their ability and to motivate them , feedback is necessary where they will know their feedback and can work on it.
2. Deliver value to customer. Acceptance of tests helps all understanding of what it means on the realization of customer needs.
3. Enable face to face communication. Here testers play a major role in bringing the customer and tester together on a face to face communication where by then the problem can be solved regarding the bug and softwares. A tester can be the ones who physically brings these people together as well the ones who drives the common language between these parties.
4. Self organize.In a true agile team everyone has the role to act as a tester. They should know how to shift focus from time to time when needed. They have to focus their attention towards verifying DONE attitude rather than DONE DONE attitude.
5. Focus on people.Testers are basically at the bottom line in a non agile software team. To them the works are given, particular time to complete is given and the programmers looks as those lower to them.
6. Keep it simple.Testers can help the customer to understand how to prominently deliver value. They have to provide a equal balance of iterative testing, just a right confidence to deliver the software.

 
Agile Testing Methodologies

• Scrum Model Testing
• Crystal
• Dynamic Software Development
• Feature Driven
• Lean Software Development
• Extreme Programming

 
PDF Tutorials

• The Case of Agile Testing – PDF reference

Selenium testing is a software testing framework for web applications. Selenium is a strong set of tools that supports quick development of test automation for web-based applications. It was developed in 2004 by Jason Huggins as a JavaScript library used to automate his manual testing routines.

Here it contains basic introduction & history about Selenium Testing , its advantages and PDF Tutorials for reference.

Selenium Core is born whose functionality underlies the Selenium RC (Remote Control) and Selenium IDE tools.The Limitation of having a JavaScript based automation engine and browser security was a drawback of Selenium to specific functionality. Google, was the long time user of Selenium and they had a developer named Simon Stewart who developed WebDriver. This tool evaded Selenium’s JavaScript sandbox to allow it to communicate with the Browser and Operating System directly using native methods.In 2008, Selenium and WebDriver merged technologies and intellectual intelligence to offer the best possible test automation framework.

Selenium provides a set of testing functions specifically geared to the needs of testing of a web application. Selenium operations are highly flexible, allowing many options for placing UI elements and comparing expected test results against actual application behaviour.
Components of Selenium are the following:

• Selenium IDE
• Selenium Remote Control
• Selenium Grid

Selenium IDE
Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment for Selenium tests and is implemented as a Firefox extension, and allows you to record, edit, and replay the test in firefox. It allows you to save tests as HTML, Java, Ruby scripts, or any other format and thus allows you to automatically add assertions to all the pages. Selenium IDE allows you to add selenese commands as and when required.
Selenium IDE has some limitations, such as:
Selenium IDE can be tested only on Firefox. No Programming login (like loops, conditional statements) can be applied
It can execute scripts created in Selenese only.
It is hard to use Selenium IDE for checking complex test cases involving dynamic contents.

Selenium Remote control
Selenium remote control is a perfect solution to cross browser testing. It is a server, written in Java and thus available on all the platforms.It also acts as a proxy for web requests from them.Selenium remote control bundles Selenium Core and automatically loads into the browser.

Selenium Grid
Selenium Grid scales the Selenium RC solution for large test suites and test that must be run in multiple environments. It helps to run tests parallel with simultaneous execution (different tests on different remote machines). It permits for running your tests in a distributed test execution environment. It can be used to run your tests against multiple browsers, multiple versions of browser, and browsers running on different operating systems. Selenium Grid takes comparatively less time for the test suite to complete a test pass.

Features
The following are the features of Selenium testing:

• Selenium testing supports Cross Browser Testing and thus it be run on multiple browsers.
• It allows scripting in numerous languages like Java, C#, PHP and Python.
• Its assertion statements give an efficient way of comparing expected and actual results.
• It has inbuilt reporting mechanism.

Using Selenium as Test Automation tool reduces the cost incurred and also ensures faster delivery. Thus it is cost effective and also not time consuming which proves that this is a standard automation tool for regression.

Selenium PDF Tutorials

• Automated Web Testing using Selenium
• Automating Functional Tests Using Selenium
• Selenium Tutorial in PDF
• Selenium Automation Framework ( SAF )
• Automated testing of CS UI using Selenium and Python

In Software Development , we need to check each functionality or events in the developing product to make sure it fulfills the actual requirements.

Test Cases are the set of conditions or variables for checking this. For each scenarios there will be test cases, and these set of conditions are planned by the tester. See the test case & templates sample pdf files

For example ,in our apllication to test, there is an option to enter 2 numbers and a button to show the sum of those two numbers . So what are the things we need to check? When pressing the button, if the numbers are not entered then a warning message should show. Second our program needs to check entered numbers are valid numbers or not. Then the result will show.

A test case contains different fields ( data )for storing the test cases report for a clear reference . The structure of this test case is known as template. This template is also known as a test case template. It may vary as per companies and tools. Here is a sample test case template with data for the above mentioned testing.

• Test case ID : WM005
• Test case description : Verify the Addition function button pressing and result
• Related requirement(s) : User already logged in
• Test Procedure :
  • Enter numbers in two text boxes
  • Press the addition button
• Test Data :
  • For 1st Input box : 0.5, 1,2,1000000,1000.000, -1,-10000, -0.5, abcd, -abcd, -0.abcd, -abcd.00
  • For second input box : for 1st Input box : 0.5, 1,2,1000000,1000.000, -1,-10000, -0.5, abcd, -abcd, -0.abcd, -abcd.00
• Expected Result :
  • It should show the correct result if entered values are valid numbers
  • It should show warning message , if entered value is not a valid number
  • It should show warning message, if we are not entered values in both boxes.
• Actual Result :
  • If we entered valid numbers, it showing correct sum of those numbers
  • If we entered inavlid numbers, it showing warning message
  • If we press the button without entering number, nothing happens
• Status : Fail
• Author : Bob
• Date of creation : 05/05/2014

From this simple test case template , I hope you understand very well about “what is a Test case template” and “what are the test cases” contained in that. This template and cases will be different a sper our product functionality and other things. The test cases can be stored simply in a excel sheet or database.See the additional informations that can be contained in a test case are.

Most of the companies  have their own test case templates according to the tools used. Its a must to keep their CMMi level standard. Template can contain other additional datas like remarks/ suggestions, browser user for testing etc.

 
PDF Reference

• Test Case Specification Template