Importance of Choosing Appropriate Testing Techniques for Effective Quality Assurance

To explain the difference between Black Box Testing and White Box Testing, simply put, if you think about a car, you have two types of people, the driver (black box) and the mechanic (white box). The driver doesn’t really need to understand how the engine works to drive, just press a few buttons and levers and turn the wheel and you are off. The mechanic however, lifts the hood and tinkers with the engines to make the car go, looking at the internal mechanisms, following the flow of petrol into the engine right through to the output gases from the exhaust.

Importance of Diverse Testing Approaches

So, what is the best software testing technique for my project? Hmmm, tricky one to answer without looking more closely at your project. There are many factors that determine the software testing techniques you’ll need to employ.

From Technical Director's Perspective 

I am very fortunate to have spent time on many projects/products with lots of customers and so I wanted to write a series of articles to go through my experiences and what I have seen. This blog is the first in the series and will look at modern development, quality assurance and quality control.

Role of Language and Writing Style in Effective Requirements

One of the most common causes of software failure and the reworking of code is poor requirements. Implementation of best practice for requirements analysis, specification and validation can have a major impact on application delivery schedule, budget and overall quality.

Beyond Defect Detection: Additional Testing Benefits

How do you know if your testing is meeting your business objectives? Not having production incidents may be a success factor but that’s only a small part to testing. Conducting an assessment of your existing testing procedures and practices is key to establishing the actual current state of testing within your business. Doing this will provide you with a tangible roadmap for implementing recommendations to meet your company’s quality objectives.

Overview of Test Types in Software Testing

Testing quite simply is the backbone of every project, whether you agree or not it’s not hard to state that testing has a place in each part of the System Development Life-Cycle. Employing a poor testing methodology will lead to the production of an unstable product and most likely one that will cost you more money and development time. Whether you decide to go Waterfall, Agile or DevOps it is essential to have a plan, especially a test plan, in place to ensure that the product is delivered in a robust and stable state, on a predictable timeline.

Retesting Techniques and Approaches

In an ever changing and fast paced world, things need to be done quicker. Not only to save costs but consumers need products and services at a touch of a button and assurances that they all cater for their needs first time without fail. Companies are faced with many dilemmas; costs, do a project on the cheap and risk delivering a shoddy project. Time, do it right but take too long and your market saturation will be behind your competitors. Quality, rush a project out the door and risk introducing operational and productions defects. So, is there another way?

What Are the Three Golden Rules?

Performance testing is simple, right? Well, those who do it will beg to differ. There are some performance testing basics you need to get right first before embarking on the journey.

How to Implement a Security Testing Strategy

IT security testing is not just about checking that you can break in via a website vulnerability such as SQL injection. To prevent an IT security attack, security testing needs to be wider than penetration testing and should cover wider aspects of security. The good news is that it’s not as hard as you might think to make your systems more secure through a broad security testing strategy. Follow these seven steps to reduce the risk of a security breach.

Efficiency Gains through Automation

Increasingly across all industries, companies are striving to achieve smarter, faster, more effective operations throughout their business. The importance of quality speed to market deliveries and reliable, timely, management information is so critical in supporting the foundations for success. A professional review of your business testing operations is an excellent way to get quality, independant support in achieving those strategic goals.

Testing support can be integrated within your business to suit your needs, costs and timescales. This can be at process mapping level; for example, looking at your procedures and at pitfalls you wish to eliminate from your business environment, or it can be at test automation level where test data and or scripts can be created and run in high volumes automatically - even over night without being attended by a member of staff.

Automation of test scripts is particularly beneficial in giving early indication of the level of quality in the delivery and can aid key decision making, which has a direct influence on the outcome for your projects. The set-up of automated testing enables concurrent processing to simulate multiple users, platforms and other important configurations. Test automation benefits include that it saves time, money and can be targeted across the most important functional areas giving you a great breadth of coverage and a level of assurance and confidence at an early stage. In addition to speed and cost benefits the re-usable aspects of automation mean that realisation of these cost benefits are utilised time and time again with minimal overhead maintenance.

MI metrics and the capturing of them is very tricky or hard to quantify as each project is different, so the real benefits are ‘value adds’, which is something many employees cannot measure either through lack of experience outside their employer or lack of training. This is where a consultancy can add value over existing staff rather than incur additional direct costs, which require extra time and money.

At nFocus we can demonstrate a wealth of experience in offering a complete testing service including areas such as planning, estimating, execution, release and post implementation. We also offer bespoke testing consultancy for those looking for specialised support in specific areas. Our extensive expertise and well qualified professionals within the team can advise and support your business on all facets of automation, performance, security, mobile and device testing in addition to manual testing practices, future proofing and scalability. This means we can save you money and that money can be reinvested within your organisation.

The impacts of not approaching testing operations correctly can cost a colossal amount, which can damage your base line profit margins and your commercial reputation. Getting the right help from the right sources at the right time is vital. It is important to engage experienced and established professionals who can demonstrate helping clientele with their testing challenges and evidence valued trusted relationships built upon the successful partnerships, whilst also saving you money and time.