Best Practices in Software Test Planning and Design

Course available as online self-paced

Course available as online Interactive

Course available to schedule for your team

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Applicable Certifications:

CSTP-A #1&2

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Concepts:

This course is essential to every software professional involved in software testing: test engineers and test analysts interested in performing effective planning, designing, and monitoring all test activities. User acceptance testing teams responsible for verifying system performance and functionality, development teams interested in performing effective unit and integration testing, development and test managers interested in gaining better control over the different test activities and the quality of the software product. This course offers a systematic approach to effective software test planning and test case design.

Whether you are doing testing for a number of years or you have just started, you need this course. You will learn a number of testing practices that you might have not done before. The course will also cover the different types of testing performed at each phase of the software lifecycle and issues involved in these types of tests.

The course will also cover the test design phase of the testing lifecycle. It starts with in-depth coverage of test case design techniques both for black and glass box testing. This includes Equivalence Class Partitioning, Boundary Value Analysis, Cause-Effect Diagram, Decision Tables and Decision Trees. The last part of the course will cover test design activities and writing Test Design Specification including documenting test conditions, test cases, test scripts and procedures, and expected results.

Upon completing this course attendees will learn:

How to work on preventing defects during software develoment
How to minimize the number of regression defects created by bad fixes
How to proactively think about all high risk scenarios that could possibly happen in production
How to test smarter not harder and follow a process to do that
Most importantly, how treat testing as an engineering process Not as an art

Outline

Module 1: Concepts and Terminology
- Purpose of Software Testing
- Testing defined
- Testing concepts and test design methodology
- Requirements and user stories
- Scenarios and scenario-based development and testing
- Test cases
- Test scripts/procedures
- Strategies for Software Testing
- Black box/Glass box/Gray box testing
Module 2: Best Software Testing Practices
- Testing without requirements or with poor requirements
- Coping with fast pace incremental and highly iterative development processes
- Quality requirements: the unspoken of and the untestable
- Pre-designed tests Vs ad hoc testing
- Systematic Negative Testing (no guessing)
- Tracking your test execution progress for effective status reporting
- Getting the most out of your Regression Testing
- Understanding the Test process: Test Planning, Test Design, and Test Execution
- Different Test Automation tools
- Static Testing
Module 3: Testing levels
- Unit testing
- Integration testing
- System testing
- Major areas of systems testing
- Usability and GUI testing
- GUI navigation diagrams
- User acceptance
Module 4: Test Case Design Techniques for Unit, system and user acceptance testing
- Strategies for generating test cases
- Requirements-Based Test Design Techniques
  - Equivalence Class Partitioning
  - Boundary Value Analysis
  - Cause-Effect Diagram
  - Decision Tables
- Code-Based Test
  - Statement/decision/condition coverage
  - Path coverage
  - Program complexity and basis path coverage
Module 5: System and User Acceptance Test Planning
- Why plan
- Developing a test strategy
- Test documentation
  - Components of a test plan
  - A test plan template
  - Creating a systems test plan
  - Identification of the test plan
  - Systems test environment
  - Systems test objectives and scope
  - Systems test approach
  - Systems test staffing and responsibilities
  - Hardware/software/network requirements
  - Testing tools
  - Systems test deliverables
  - Systems test tasks
Module 6: Systems Test Design
- Test design basics
- Test design activities
- Deliverables of the test design phase
- Major areas of system testing
- Business requirement testing
- Preparing the Test Design Specification
  - Defining test conditions
  - Testing for missing business requirements
  - Defining test cases
  - Identifying data needed to execute tests
  - Defining baseline data
  - Determining expected results
  - Defining test cycles