The Test Process and Important Testing Techniques

Abstract: As software development gets more complex and high paced, the pressure on testing becomes greater to find business critical defects in the software as fast as possible. But testing that is only introduced in the last stages of development will most likely not give any valuable information. The fact is that testing needs to be an active part of development even at the early stages. Requirements need to be written with the input from the testers and testers need informed of what requirements matter, in order to start writing test cases early on. By making the process more effective testers have the chance to increase the quality of both the testing and software. This thesis has been made with the help of the IT-department at ‘the bank’. Due to security issues I am not allowed to disclose the name of the bank. The goal of the thesis was to analyze the testing process from beginning to end present possible improvements. In order to make this evaluation a literary study was made in the subject. An effective test process may vary a lot depending on how the organization is build. Factors like the test team’s size, resources and skills all weigh in heavily. Testing as also completely dependent on how development is managed. In order to improve the testing in the future the bank needs to start automating test on a regular basis. It will also be necessary for some structural changes to make the gap between analysts and testers smaller.