According to Statista, in 2012, testing and quality assurance consumed 18% of IT companies’ budget that has now reached to 39% and will be 40% in 2019. 

Established companies have started realizing the importance of software testing. However, there is a dire need for technology startups to follow the same. Technology startups often face uncertainties and funding roadblocks. However, there is a great reason for startups to opt Software Testing; and the reason is Quality.

Contents 1. Limitations of a Technology Startup 2. Major Goals and Objectives of Software Testing 3. Software Testing Types that Shouldn’t Be Ignored 4. Conclusion

While a few bugs early in the software development phase might not seem a big deal, but software defects are known to be costly post its product-release. In fact, IBM states that the cost of errors increases dramatically as your software solution progresses through the development cycle. It’s about 30 times more expensive to fix a bug after release than during the initial stages.

[Image Source – IBM]

Limitations of a Technology Startup

Just like any other enterprise, technology startups have their limitations and challenges in software testing. These include lack of budgets, time and resources that have to be allocated to testing. Let us discuss these challenges in detail.

1. Time:

There is a constant pressure for startups to release a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) fast to get quick returns. Most startups perceive releasing their product in the market and fixing the bugs later upon identified by users/market is a good idea. However, they fail to realize that post-production testing takes a lot of time as there is a need to rework on the same piece of code every time they make a change. Hence, more time is involved in finding and correcting bugs at this stage.

2. Resources:

Like every coin has two sides, startups also come with the excitement of learning something new and dealing with the constant pressure of wearing multiple hats. Most startups don’t have a dedicated department for testing, their development teams perform the necessary tests. Therefore, they might overlook some bugs due to the lack of dedicated resources for testing.

3. Budget:

Budget constraints are a harsh reality for startups, and this is the reason software testing is overlooked. Additional headcount means extra expenses. The cost associated with finding bugs posts the production stage is way higher than finding them during the development stage.

4. Thought Leadership:

Often, technology startups lack a Thought Leadership team having a strategic planning of QA activities. The tools to use, the number of resources to involve, the total amount of time QA activities consume and the overall costs are often overlooked by startups. This makes it difficult for technology startups to release a certain application.

Understanding how to overcome the above limitations can help technology startups define their strategy. Under no circumstances should software testing be overlooked or dismissed.

Major Goals and Objectives of Software Testing

– Finding defects in the software to allow a smooth process

– Evaluating the level of a product’s quality and informing the stakeholder

– Ensuring that the final results match business specifications and user requirements

– Increasing profit potential

– Gaining customer loyalty by offering a quality product

Software Testing Types  that Shouldn’t Be Ignored

Here are a few types of software testing that should never be ignored:

Exploratory Testing

For a new application, exploratory testing is exceptionally important to lay the foundation of quality. Exploratory testing is an ad-hoc process, where the tester manually goes through the software in search of finding bugs.

Regression Testing

Testing is not a one-off process, every time a change is made to the code, there is a regression test to ensure the code has not broken the previous functioning features.

Performance Testing

Providing faster performance is the best way to establish a loyal user and vice versa. Application load time is an important factor that helps in keeping your users happy. The performance testing process ensures that the application loads quickly and can handle expected traffic.

Conclusion

When you are a new player in the market, quality will set you apart and help you grow. A simple formula to make your technology startup a hit is to keep your users happy and provide them with a seamless experience while they browse your application. Ignoring testing from your plan can probably cost you and your customers.

TestingXperts provide startups with unique plans according to their needs and in their budgets. Our core-flex models help in dealing with the inconsistent resource requirements of our startup clients. We offer flexible engagement models to facilitate our clients with optimized QA resource planning. This meets their fluctuating requirements at any time of their contract and saves unncessary budget leakage. Connect with us to have a unique software testing services plan for your startup.

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The rapid demand for IT organizations to deliver high-quality software at a progressively faster rate has necessitated the shift to agile development and DevOps methodologies. As applications under development become more complex in nature, continuously changing to include new technologies and feature sets, manual testing simply can’t keep up. This rapid shift is driving the need for test automation. Test Automation delivers strong benefits, such as.

Contents 1. Test Automation Benefits 2. Ways to Drive Value from Automation Testing 3. Define a Clear Set of Goals 4. Don’t Automate Everything, Manual Testing Will Still Be Needed 5. There is More to Automation Than Just Functional Testing at the GUI Level 6. Test Automation Requires Regular Maintenance 7. Choose Tools Matching Your Team’s Skills 8. Define a clear test data management strategy

Test Automation Benefits

Irrespective of whether a traditional or agile development approach is applied, opting for test automation needs careful planning and an exhaustive understanding of the benefits it can deliver. Setting the right expectations for test automation can lead to creating a successful strategy whereas having unrealistic expectations can do the opposite.

Embarking on the journey of automated software testing requires the adoption of best practices such as behavior-driven development (BDD) and continuous integration and testing. These are key elements to improving the overall development process. When done well, the advantages of test automation are indisputable, but when done poorly, the disadvantages can be worse.

In this blog, we will identify the ways to drive value from Automation Testing.

Ways to Drive Value from Automation Testing

The following recommendations will increase your possibility of succeeding in adopting test automation as an integral part of your testing approach.

1. Define a Clear Set of Goals

It is essential to define a simple but clear and balanced set of goals while automating tests. Test automation has been taken as a “magic bullet” that will reduce the cost of testing dramatically and is also assumed to offer 100% coverage. However, the main purpose of automation testing is to find defects early on and diminish quality risks by not allowing them to proliferate without the need for human intervention.

Defining a clear set of test automation goals allows the whole team to experience the benefits of automation. On the other hand, if automation is considered as another form of management control, it will not be effective. Therefore, it is important to list goals and develop an execution plan which leads to incremental improvement.

2. Don’t Automate Everything, Manual Testing Will Still Be Needed

While there are numerous benefits to test automation, automating every test might not be beneficial. For example, usability and exploratory testing require human intelligence and intervention, and do not explain an investment for automation.

Therefore, teams will need to leverage both manual and automated testing to ensure software quality before launching an application. Employing a mix-blend of the manual as well as automation testing can be the best way to succeed.

3. There is More to Automation Than Just Functional Testing at the GUI Level

Almost every team starts its automation effort with GUI functional tests, however as the components of the GUI tend to change regularly, they are costly to build, slow to implement, and delicate to maintain. Hence, to ensure that problems are discovered easily and rapidly, a blend of different testing levels and types is required to reach the anticipated level of quality and to alleviate the risks associated with defects.

Teams should not just think about automating GUI functional testing, but also various other types of tests, such as:

A clear test automation strategy should feature the amount of time your teams spend in each area. The prime focus should be on the highest-value tests, allowing you to establish a clear ROI.

4. Test Automation Requires Regular Maintenance

Poor practices yield tests that are hard to understand and maintain, and may produce failures which take time to research. As the application or system is modified, you need to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of each test constantly. New scripts must be written to bring out new features and directions. Teams have to write and maintain these tests. This truly helps to ensure that you are not building tests that will disrupt things as easily.

5. Choose Tools Matching Your Team’s Skills

Due to a large number of automation in testing solutions available on the market, the products available from various software companies often vary in terms of their focus and practical scope. No single solution from a solution provider will meet all of your testing needs. Therefore, it is important to select the right tools that take application targets into account, fit your team’s development practices, and also match the skills of your resources.

6. Define a clear test data management strategy

In order to test business-critical software, testing teams need to plan and retrieve the essential test data, as well as the activities associated with it. Unavailability of the required data can have a severe impact on the software testing activity and can result in inadequate testing coverage. Test Data is something which constantly gets refreshed and versioned after some time, having to be repeatedly referred to to evaluate the required outcome of an activity. If test data is not managed and maintained appropriately, it can cause delays in the testing and development process. Hence, it is important to have a clear test data management strategy to accelerate the application’s go-to-market speed and to eliminate business losses.

Conclusion

It can be established that automation testing results in cost reduction, as well as time/effort savings, consistency, quicker feedback, and results, thereby contributing to increased productivity and profits. Improved test automation with accurate testing techniques helps ensure that a shippable product is delivered at the end of every sprint.

TestingXperts’ Test Automation strategy enables organizations to increase release velocity and reduce time to market. TestingXperts has developed an extensible automation framework, ‘Tx-Automate’, which is modular, reusable, integrated and compatible. The framework helps to configure/create test suites by combining various automated tests and making those test suites available for execution. Connect with our software automation testing services to know more.

The post 6 Recommendations for Driving Business Value from Test Automation first appeared on TestingXperts.

GDPR compliance Testing

With the GDPR in force from 25 May 2018, companies must comply with new requirements for EU data protection. As digital business inflates and customers increase their online activities, privacy protection and security is more important than ever. Enterprises that can better respond to the requirements of GDPR, and can do this before their competitors, have an incredible opportunity to build more trust among customers and build a positive business reputation.

This new regulation also has a serious impact on the development and software testing of new systems, creating a roadblock in the process of digital transformation. Corresponding to this current situation, it is essential that software developers and testers have complete knowledge of what impact GDPR has on their business.

In this infographic, we have stated four key reasons why GDPR training is equally important for software developers and testers.

The post Why GDPR Training is a MUST for Software Developers and Testers- Infographic first appeared on TestingXperts.

2018 continues to be a year where technological trends like machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, SaaS, Smart devices, intelligent systems continue to make a deep impact on businesses. The digitalization of business and collaborative launches have led to increasing dependence on software for all kinds of jobs.

Contents 1. QA Outsourcing 2. Why Outsource QA Services 5. Conclusion

Consequently, this has increased the costs of testing, overheads of testing tools, testing infrastructure, and the right skill set to implement them. In this competitive industry, the costs associated with botched applications continue to rise and deeply impact enterprises not just for financial reasons, but also with the company’s image. Consequently, this has amplified the focus on QA and software testing within the SDLC.

QA Outsourcing

In this day and age, testing has become multi-dimensional as it works with an Omni-channel objective. Expertise, strategy, infrastructure, best practices, and skilled resources are what you need to bring out the best in the approach. However, opting for outsourcing Quality Assurance services can be an important option for any organization both from a financial and technical perspective. Let’s identify the prime reasons why outsourcing QA services can prove to be a significant decision for organizations.

Why Outsource QA Services?

1. Experience and Expertise

QA and software testing requires extensive experience and expertise. Therefore, it is imperative to choose a well-established and accomplished partner, well-equipped with the latest trends, best practices, and strategies in QA and software testing domain. Simultaneously, an efficient testing partner would have a good understanding of the emerging technologies like IoT. A specialist testing partner can bring the best-in-class human resources for your project.

2. Flexibility

The most evident reason for outsourcing is to have the right resources with the right skill sets readily available with the flexibility that is needed by your business. QA and testing partners have proficient teams that are updated with the right technology required which can be deployed at short notice. Thus, flexibility is a major reason why you should consider outsourcing QA services.

3. Cost-effectiveness

Cost is a significant factor to consider, though, it should not become a reason to hire amateur resources, which can be costlier in the longer run. Therefore, it is recommended to outsource QA services to a well-recognized and a specialist company.

4. Focus on core business processes

Outsourcing enables you to free your own valuable resources to do the work which adds more value to your organization.

Conclusion

Enterprises are in dire need of robust applications but with quality and speed. To ensure superior quality and to avoid conflicts around primacies, testing should be considered as a separate function undertaken by different teams or companies. Outsourcing an important function like QA can enable organizations to concentrate on core activities and innovation, whereas the QA and testing providers work proficiently, ensuring quality outcomes and positive business results.

Here is how we at TestingXperts can help your organization in providing QA and software testing services. Our experience and expertise, coupled with flexible models provides you a cost-effective option for your organization to focus on your core business processes.

The post Top 4 Reasons Why You Should Outsource QA Services first appeared on TestingXperts.

At the face of it, automation of acceptance testing is a compelling idea but watch out for the caution-areas lying on some fringes

Contents 1. Automated Testing Importance 2. Challenges of Automated Testing 3. Conclusion

Automated Testing Importance

Automated tests have defined new frontiers of speed and velocity while bringing quality-related relief for software requirements. They are especially useful when the pace of development needs these aspects:

– Super-fast cycles – The GTM (Go-to-Market) window can be suitably reduced – Continuous delivery is relevant – Automation can eke out shrinkage of feedback loops – Impact of comprehensive-requirement-validation is high

Software release cycles assume a different momentum altogether when automated tests come into play. The ‘Acceptance’ component is a crucial one in testing so automating that transpires into a new level of speed and traction for quick apps that an organization wants to dish out in today’s dynamic business environments. That comes in very handy when an enterprise is keen and hungry enough to quickly deliver a good idea to its users. More so, as testing has ceased to be a time-guzzler in Agile SDLC and DevOps environments. Automated testing enables simultaneous development, integration, testing and deployment of code.

But such gains are not directly amenable here as some pitfalls have to be taken into account before it’s too late:

Challenges of Automated Testing

1. Precision of test goals and test target can never be footnotes for any test, and that applies all the more for automated tests.

The capacity of testing environments available is quite crucial in determining the success of these tests, so too many of these tests where the environment is not sufficient or not provisioned smartly, would be a no-go zone. Do ensure that test-results analysis catches up in time with the pace of the rapid continuous test. No matter how much an automated test serves your thrill, intention and time-crunch; make sure that real and rigorous testing is not sidelined in this choice. And that these brilliant time-saving tests are not brittle when they run. Leverage automated software testing services to ensure that your web applications works effectively without any security issues .

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