High level overview of what Software testing and QA involves. Intended for non software staff or students

2.  Why do we need to verify quality
 What causes issues in SW
 What is in the toolbox (terminology)
 Quality Assurance vs Testing vs V&V

3.  Goals of verification
 Quality is subjective
 Mindset differences (user vs developer)
 Conflict of interests
 Cost of defects
 Need to integrate multiple pieces
 Compliance
 More

4.  Find defects
 Confirm that the requested functionality
works the way it should
 Ensure proper integration
 Confirm that existing functionality and
performance are not affected
 Serves as mitigation for variety of risks that
come up as part of the projects and reported
from customers and internally

5.  Quality is often hard to define
 We often don’t recognize when its there, but
always when it’s not
 There are many perspective on quality:
◦ In the user view, quality is fitness for purpose or meeting
user’s needs, source of satisfaction and “good” user
experience;
◦ In the manufacturing view, quality means conformance to
process standards;
◦ In the business view – willingness of consumers to pay for
the product and fast return on investment (ROI)

7.  Synthesis vs analysis
 Testers know less about more
 Developers know more about less

8. Common Misconceptions Reality
Quality means goodness, elegance Quality is conformance to
requirements
Quality is intangible, not
measurable
Quality is measured by the cost of
nonconformance
The “economics of quality” are
prohibitive, not relevant
It is (usually) cheaper to do things
right the first time
Quality problems originate with
the workers
Most problems start in planning
and development
Quality is the responsibility of the
quality department
Quality is shared by every function
and department

9.  Developers should not perform final testing
on their own work
 Testing should not be responsible or
dependent on development deadlines, costs,
resourcing etc.

10.  Typical data for cost per defect varies from study
to study but resembles the following pattern:

 Defects found during requirements = X
 Defects found during design = 2 * X
 Defects found during coding and testing = 5 *X
 Defects found after release = 20 *
X
And: Often consequences of not finding defects go
far beyond the cost.

13.  Multiple pieces of SW are tested
independently
 Impact on each other
 Overall impact on the product
 Possible regression in existing functionality /
performance

14.  Incorrect, incomplete, vague, ambiguous
requirements
 Inadequate, wrong, suboptimal design
 Poor, wrong coding
 Human errors in coding
 Errors in third party software

15. What is what
 Testing
 Verification
 Validation
 Quality Assurance

16. Validation
Verification
Testing

17.  Testing is a part (or a subset) of Verification
Other verification activities
 Document Analysis: reviews of specifications,
use cases etc.
 Design Analysis: reviews of design, mockups,
prototypes
 Code Analysis: reviews of written code for
conformance, good practices

18.  By timeframe:
Unit, Parallel, Functional, Integration,
Regression, Acceptance
 By function/depth:
Unit, Interface, Installation, Smoke, Functional,
Performance, Regression, Deployment
 By depth:
◦ Smoke
◦ Black box
◦ White box (Gray box)
◦ Unit

19.  Verification
◦ Inspections
◦ Reviews
◦ Static code analysis
◦ Testing (Unit, Manual, Automated)
 Validation
◦ User Acceptance (or Pilot testing)
◦ Pilot
 Compliance (procedures and documentation)
 Training (continuous improvement)