In recent years, the term “shift testing” is popular among Software testing professionals.
The actual meaning of this term is, conducting software testing in the phase of software development to reduce the defects and save the costly bugs in business.
Shift-left testing is more often used to describe increased involvement of quality assurance (QA) engineers in the development process.
The defects are tested effectively by software engineers before sending the program to QA for in-depth testing.
This generally means, executing and developing more automated testing of the UI and APIs.
However, there are some basic software testing steps every freshman should perform.
Furthermore, it’s for shift-left testing, formal testing, ad hoc testing, code merging, and integration, or call a colleague to have a quick look.
The ultimate goal of this basic testing is carried out to detect bugs and fix them immediately.
If not done quickly, you need to spend more on unnecessary bug fixing or hire a developer to reproduce it, debug it, and solve it, before you try it again.
Here are the essential software testing steps every freshman should follow:
1. Basic Functionality Testing
- Begin with testing basic functions like checking every button on the screen works.
- Ensure to enter simple texts that don’t crash the software in each field.
- Don’t just try out multiple combinations of clicks and characters, or edge conditions, because as a tester you don’t have to begin with complex factors.
- In simple words, resist other people from your work. Don’t let others enter data as it will crash your work.
- Start with basic testing like, accessing API functionality and check with it intensively before you submit.
- If you detect problems with your basic testing functionality, just intimate with others and fix your problem.
- Don’t leave bugs in the initial process itself, as it can surprise you with entire dismantling in the long run.
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2. Code Review
- In this step, many will agree that you will detect more defects easily when you check your code with others.
- As a freshman, do a peer review of your code methodology before submitting your code for testing.
- Remember, you must do your basic functionality testing before reviewing your code.
3. Static Code Analysis
- There are many tools available in the market that can analyze and perform on source code or bytecode before you execute it.
- These static code analysis tools are sometimes weak with the source code.
- For example, security vulnerabilities and potential concurrency issues.
- Use these static code analysis tools to analyze your coding standards, and then configure tools to run automatically.
4. Unit Testing
- Usually, developers write unit tests to check whether the unit works (method, class, or component) as expected.
- All these tests are performed across various ranges of valid and invalid inputs.
- It has to be continuous integration, you should run unit tests every time before changing the source code repository.
- Also, make sure to run the code on your development machine too.
- Some will face coverage issues for their unit tests and thus fail to build without enough unit tests.
- Developers can also test with mock ways and virtual objects to check whether their units can be tested independently.
- If your unit tests fail, fix them just before someone else starts using your code.
- If you can’t fix them instantly, let the other worker know what has failed, so it won’t generate more issues in the long run.
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5. Single-user Performance Testing
- Some testers will load performance testing into their continuous integration process and it’s ideal to run load tests right after entering the code.
- This is generally applicable for back-end code. But developers must check for single-user performance on the front end.
- Ensure that the software is responsive when the user is using the system.
- If your web pages take more than a minute to display from a local or emulated (responsive) web server, find the client-side code issue that slows down and fix it.
- All these code fixings should be carried out instantly before users face these issues to deliver a responsive solution.
- Make sure to run all these tests as number of times as possible, before delivering the code.
- As big issues in your code can ruin all your time in fixing and yes you need to invest time in writing as well as testing code.
Manager at HP Software says, “40% of my time is spent designing and writing code; 5% is spent on code review and static code analysis; 25% on unit testing and integration testing; and 30% on basic functionality testing and single-user performance testing,”
The bugs issues in the code can ruin all your reputation. “A developer who doesn’t find the obvious defects is never going to shine,” says Markov.
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Bottom Line
Developers have to produce software that’s simple to use. No one will encourage developers who know only pure coding.
To develop your career as a freshman, always invest more time in designing, reviewing, and testing your code than writing it.
To produce user-friendly and simple working software, you surely need this balance.
If you want to know more about software testing courses, reach out to us.
