Performances Testing vs Performance Engineering: The Real Difference

Performance of the software or the finished output is a universal quality which is often affected by each aspect of its code, means for execution as well as its design. It has been found out that half of the executives in majority of the IT concerns face performance issues with respect to 20 % of the projects that they are handling. Ensuring sound performance of the software applications is crucial for the growth of the IT firms and more so in the mobile devices. The success also depends on the user experience to a considerable extent as many times poor performance leads to frustration and dissatisfaction amongst the clients.

Adoption of mobile technology is the latest as well as the phenomenon in the history that demonstrates the fastest technology adoption curve. The mobile application market is expected to experience a tremendous growth within the next few years. Sound performance of the application that are deployed to the mobile devices becomes highly significant as poor performance often hampers the revenue levels, brand image and lead to decline in customer loyalty.

To achieve sound performance standards with respect to the software applications, performance engineering and performance testing both are crucial and needs to be undertaken. Both of these need to be optimized and used appropriately to drive great performance standards.

Performance Engineering

Performance engineering in case of Software Development with respect to mobile platforms has been observed to be one of the fastest growing areas in Software Engineering. Through performance engineering, the connection between recognition of a business and success of the application when the same is applied to mobile based software is now largely becoming apparent.

Performance engineering encompass a set of roles, activities, skills, tools, practices and deliverables that are applied at each and every phase of the SDLC that leads to ensuring that a solution is going to be designed, implemented, and finally operationally supported for meeting the non-functional requirements in case of performance like latency, throughput or even memory usage.

With the connection between the success of the application and that of the business gradually gaining recognition especially in terms of the mobile devices, performance engineering has adopted a perfective and preventive role within the SDLC.

• It is invasive and involves people from different units of an organization but chiefly within the IT company.
• It helps in increasing the business revenue by means of ensuring that the system is able to process transactions in the required timeframe.
• It helps in eliminating late deployment of the system and system rework owing to issues related to performance
• It also helps in elimination of avoidable efforts with respect to system tuning.
• Performance Engineering helps in avoiding unnecessary as well as additional acquisition costs of hardware.
• Helps in the reduction of increased costs with respect to software maintenance owing to performance related problems in case of production.

Performance Testing

In case of software engineering, performance testing is an in general and non functional testing that is carried out in order to determine the performance of a system with respect to stability and responsiveness in face of a specified workload. Often this type of testing helps in the investigation of measure, validation or verification of other attributes of a system that establishes the quality of the same like reliability, scalability and usage of resources.

• It serves a number of purposes like demonstrating of the system that fulfils performance criteria.
• It can also be employed for comparing the performance of two systems for finding out the one that performs better. It can also measure the part of a system or the specific workload that are the basic causes accounting for bad or poor performance of a system.

Performance Testing consists of a number of testing like Stress testing, Load Testing , Spike Testing, Soak Testing, Isolation testing and Configuration testing.

Performance engineering does not merely encompass the supporting infrastructure and the software itself but more than that. Due to its macro approach, it has evolved into an altogether separate discipline in case of a number of the organizations. Its adherence to the non functional requirements also gets validated post the deployment of the same through monitoring of the production systems. On the other hand, being a subset of Performance Engineering, Performance Testing is a practice that strives for establishing sound performance into the design, implementation and architecture of the system.

Benefits of Using Selenium Testing Tools over QTP

QTP

QTP is a functional testing tool having the feature for storing screenshot of every page navigated at the time of execution. Therefore, it can be used as an evidence for completion of testing, and also you can refer the screenshots of earlier executions if there is any requirement to refer them. Test report can be written automatically to a customized report page that will confirm accuracy of the report and also it can enhance the report’s look and feel.

Advantages of Using QTP

• User friendliness and a little effort for script creation.
• Advanced solution for regression test and functional test automation.
• Meets the requirements of both non-technical and technical users.
• Easy configuration and many inbuilt functionalities by default.
• Automation scripts are performed within specific interval of time by means of task scheduler or crone job.
• Easily integrated with test administration tools such as QC.
• Outstanding object identification process or mechanism.

Disadvantages of QTP

In current economic crisis, software companies are planning for efficient productivity as well as cost reduction. QTP is losing its market owing to the following limitations:

• Runs in Windows environments only.
• Unable to test with all types and versions of browser.
• Restricted to smaller testing teams or organizations.
• High licensing as well as add-inns costs.
• Slow in execution as compared with open source tools.

Selenium

Selenium Testing has four variants that can be used in combination or in isolation to create a full automation suite for your web applications.

1. Recording or Creating as well as enhancing scripts – Selenium IDE
2. Cross browser testing – Selenium Web Driver (API)
3. Executing scripts – Selenium Remote Control (RC)
4. Cross platform testing – Selenium Grid

Advantages of Using Selenium:-

• Powerful and simple document object model (DOM) level testing can be used for constant combination with agile projects.
• Has great flexibility and extensibility, with its tight integration with the browser unmatched by proprietary tools that are available.
• Supports different browsers, for instance, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
• NET, JAVA, Perl, Ruby, PHP and other Object Oriented Programming languages.
• Offers the option of using various IDEs such as Netbeans, Eclipse, Visual Studio etc. depending on the selection of development language.

Disadvantages of Selenium

• Doesn’t support uploading files from local machine
• Doesn’t support the windows application
• Supports only application based on browsers
• Offers only one-sided support for dialog boxes
• Selenium being an open source has no official technical support

Comparison

There are many comparisons between the features of Selenium and QTP. Selenium only supports web applications. QTP supports client server applications only (e.g. built in TCL or TK and PowerBuilder). For Selenium it is portable and open source where as for QTP it is costly and licensed. The price of ten user license is around 60L. From the standpoint of UI object storage and management, For Selenium it is managed applying UI-Element user properties and extension. For QTP, it is a set of dynamically loaded libraries stored in the Java archive file.

Conclusion

Applying Selenium as the Functional Test Automation Tool can help you reduce the cost brought upon yourself for licensing using QTP. In the initial stages, the efforts required to script for Selenium raised by about 15% than QTP. Once all the solutions are ready the efforts of automation using QTP and Selenium were almost the same.

However, to conclude, we can say that Selenium is more beneficial than QTP so far as flexibility and costs are concerned. In addition, it allows you to run tests parallel, where as in QTP you are only allowed to run tests in sequence.

The Benefits Of Utilizing On-Demand QA Staffing

The ever-changing business scenarios and demanding economic situations have put tremendous pressure on IT divisions or sectors to optimize the transaction cost in developing and releasing softwares. On-demand services provide companies much-required financial flexibility in the structure of usage based, utility-like pricing. By moving to an on-demand service, firms can eliminate quality issues more efficiently before releasing a new software.

As the technology is advancing at a rapid pace, this is not to mention that the increasing reliance on technology is compelling organizations to develop new apps and updates more frequently. Testing departments are struggling to keep up lowering cycle times and detect any error before the application enters production. Therefore, the recent mandate for IT firms is to quickly create test environments that closely matches to real-time scenarios, which makes it a costly and complex affair.

On-Demand Testing Services

On-demand service is basically a delivery model proficient of packaging application testing; related tools and the necessary infrastructure, through a usage-based approach. On-demand services offer on the spot access to testing resources that are delivered through existing on-premise environment or via cloud. The combo of lower capital costs and quicker service provisioning allows companies to meet random their needs and niche, while augmenting turnaround time.

On-demand service, also known as pay-per-use model, allows firms to switch to a flexible operational model, as they no longer required to make high investments in tool licensing, test infrastructure, maintenance, hiring and training employees, etc. User can select from a diverse testing tools, solution accelerators to perform several tests like specialized, performance, last-mile & mobile testing and ready-to-use configurations. On-demand testing helps in quick test automation at lower costs. As per the changes made to the app, on-demand service providers update automation scripts. Automated test cases can work within several environments like development; production; and system integration using the same scripts, which results in amplified test coverage and lowering defects in production.

Suitable Scenarios

On-demand testing is appropriate for these types of testing scenarios:

• Intricate infrastructure requirements (for example: mobile and device testing)
• Fractional tests (for example: security, performance, browser compatibility and usability testing)
• Niche testing skill requisites (for example: last-mile, acceptance, safety and mobile testing).

Firms can partner with experienced on-demand QA staffing service provider to manage end-to-end testing needs and deliver high quality.

Advantages of on-demand testing

• Cost Optimization

As stated above, the pay-per-use model provides financial flexibility, and offers information required to forecast prospective expenses in a transparent way. As the complete testing process is managed by the service provider, the internal resources get enough free time that can be used for other core activities.

• Reduced provisioning time

Scalable and dynamic provisioning radically lowers provisioning time, from months to days, making it apt for meeting seasonal and dynamic testing demands.

• Ideal for performance and last-mile testing

Companies can create test environments of any scale and test app in environments that very closely resembles real-life situations. This makes it perfectly suited for testing that needs thousands of synchronized users, across diverse geographical locations, like load, performance and last mile testing.

Planning and executing test schedules without delay

With the help of high environment, organizations can plan and carry out test to- do list without delay, thus reducing the time to market a new app and optimizing test cycles.

• Greater business dexterity

Companies can attain better business agility and can react to business alterations effectively, as they are virtually armored from the complex technological setting.

• Reduced configuration- related mistakes

Pre-configured software images and standardized infrastructure can lessen configuration-related errors, that pop up at the time of production

7 Best Practices for Agile Testing Gallop

Agile testing is basically a type of software testing practice that helps the developers in easily adapting and responding to the sudden and rapid changes. It follows the principles of Agile software development. The basic difference of agile testing and  conventional testing is that, in case of agile testing the responsibilities are shared equally by each team member. It makes every single member of a team responsible for the quality as well as the outcome of a final product.

Agile methodology has of late become quite popular. Though its origin is tied to software development, it has now spread to many industries. Being an important methodology in terms of software testing and development to ensure quality, the project managers accordingly need to be aware and familiar with the best practices associated with it.

Following 7 best practices of Agile testing can bring about potential benefit to organizations implementing Agile testing:

1. Continuous Integration

This is essential as continuous integration of the code helps to keep the same updated. It is indeed a good practice as it helps to get fast feedback on the latest check-ins. All the written codes need to be verified before they are connected with the old code. Continuous integration of the code leads to simplification of the new user stories

2. System Metaphor

This is also a practice that needs to be followed as descriptive class as well as function names help in a better understanding of the code.

3. Code standard

Creating a coding standard is recommended before starting with the coding process. Using an uniform style with respect to coding is good as any member of a team can take the code of some other member and work on the same as his/her own.

4. Shippable Code

Having a package code that is working is also necessary. Along with the recurrent release of the code with the package, the client gets an assurance of receiving the business value that is expected within a short time.

5. Test-Driven Development

It is advisable to engage in setting up the environment that makes it easier to create the unit tests before starting with the process of coding. However with the Test Driven Development approach, all sessions start with writing of the programming adaptive tests that the unit tests succeed.

6. SCRUM meetings

In these meetings, generally lasting for roughly 10 minutes, ideally the entire team dealing with the project should be present. It is helpful as it serves as a yardstick with respect to the progress of the work as to discuss the amount of job done the day before, the agenda for the present day as well as the goals for the near future along with checking for any hurdles that might obstruct the flow of job.

These meetings however demand a good scrum master who can direct the discussions to something positive and fruitful and not to sheer wastage of precious time.

7. Release Planning

Planning needs to be undertaken regarding the release of the product. The calendar determining the releases should send a clear message to all regarding the expectation for the functionality of the new software.

Moreover release planning if done appropriately helps in correcting the code in case all the versions support automated testing as well as its integration with all other constituents.

Agile Testing also provides the company with a number of benefits

–          It reduces costs and helps in increasing market share as well as revenues.

–          Agile Testing offers faster time to market the product once the coding is completed by the development team.

–          Agile testing also improves quality through a number of tools that help in automation and emphasize on quality.

–          It keeps the customers as well as the employees happy.

Since agile development is purely people-centric, one needs to ensure adherence to certain values and principles that paves the way for collaboration and constructive criticism. The important constituent with respect to the agile testing mindset is the force that drives the team to continually look for out more efficient and better methods.

Load & Stress testing on Mobile device using open source

Smartphones popularity has greatly influenced mobile applications   and responsive websites. Mobiles now play a major role for conducting profitable business. Enterprise mobility is enhancing efficiency of employee communication to reach out to consumers, clients and suppliers. Earlier, when mobiles played a  less important role with respect to business applications, performance issues or outages were not attended with importance.

However, this situation no longer holds relevance to the present day. Nowadays, performance problems related to mobile applications result in huge loss of revenues, diminished productivity of the employees, damage to brand reputation, and many other significant losses.

Modern day consumers have very high expectations regarding the performance of mobile applications. This increases the responsibility of mobile application development teams who are accountable for delivering, reliable, responsive as well as well-designed applications.

Moreover, nowadays a number of diverse mobile devices has proliferated the marketplace, providing development teams of mobile application with a dynamic cross-section of platforms to test.

Mobile Testing is not similar to traditional performance testing. As mobile is entirely a different game, testing attributes and requirements are also a lot more steeper owing to its unpredictable nature. Load and stress testing are carried out for assessing the performance of the mobile under normal and extreme situations.

Load Testing:

Load testing is carried out for determining whether the application would be able to maintain the required number of users along with acceptable rejoinder times. The intention of load testing is basically to standardize the maximum load with respect to simultaneous users that the mobile application is able to sustain before it experiences system failure.

Stress testing on the other hand aims to validate the consistency of an application as well as its dependability over a significant span of time.

On the server side

Load testing is essential at the server’s end so for understanding the variations with respect to response times, delays in the delivery of significant messages, streaming of resource intensive packets, application crashes, etc.

On the client side

Load testing of mobile applications are carried out to address the general discrepancies related to the application behavior on diverse platforms and different handsets, CPU consumption and memory, battery issues as well as loading speed.

For sound testing of mobile applications,

• Selection of the right testing tool for automation for the success of a mobile application testing program is vital
• Chosen tool need to support all the desired platforms as well as testing for different screen types, input mechanism and resolutions.
• The chosen tool need be connected to the external system to carry out end-to-end testing.
• For identification of the most critical platform/hardware combination that needs testing, Weighted Device method of platform mix needs to made good use of.
• The end-to-end flow of functions need to checked on all possible mobile platforms at least for once.

One can make use of NeoLoad which is basically a performance testing tool that provides support for Mobile Application Testing.

Stress testing

This refers to software testing for assessing satisfactory performance under extreme as well as unfavorable conditions. These may be the outcome of process loading, heavy network traffic, maximum requests, etc.

It has been observed that most of the systems have been developed under assumption of normal operating conditions. So even if one crosses a limit, errors are mostly negligible in case the system undergoes stress testing during its development.

• Stress testing primarily lays major emphasis on the availability of the application as well as its error handling capability in face of unfavorable conditions such as extreme heavy loads.
• This testing is generally carried out for ensuring non crashing software that may happen owing to insufficient resources.
• It also helps in the determination of reaction of the hardware while in the stress period.
• It is used to identify errors in slowness as well as during the peak user loads, issues relating to corruption of data and security loopholes during the stress period

Stress testing of mobile applications focuses on a number of transactions ranging from identified to break transactions, as well as on those that are heavily stressed while testing. It also checks when a database is devoid of any load. The process of stress testing loads concurrent users apart from normal levels of the system for finding out the weakest link of the system.

Both types help in eradication of the performance bottlenecks that crop up when a number of users require access to a common resource. Identification of the problems with these two testing methods in the early phase, testers are able to upgrade hardware, optimize applications, or even employ effective strategies to make performance improvements before release of the software.

How to move from traditional testing to agile

Agile testing is the order of the day and many testers are switching from traditional Agile testing practice. In this context, it is needed to say that, business requirements for Agile testing practice are different from that of their traditional counterparts. Agile methods are considered healthier by modern testers. Also, the test cases that are prepared for agile testing are quite different from the traditional testing.

Why you need to shift from traditional to agile testing?

One of the advantages of agile testing is that it focuses on automation. In this regard, Agile testing practice includes automated acceptance tests. It also creates regression test plans as part of the continuous integration associated with software development.

It is evident that traditional testers are very much dependent on documents. On the contrary agile testers do not use too many documents. Neither do they had to write lengthy test cases. In short, it can be said that agile testers work is very much reduced in agile testing methodology. Agile testers need to be communicative and they require gathering information pertaining to their tasks through verbal, virtual or written communication.

Enterprises discover the various challenges associated with traditional testing. These incorporate delay in writing test cases which causes a corresponding delay in software development. Often defects are found later and then making changes in the design and development of software becomes a bit complicated.

Traditional testing practice is quite rigid and so an alteration in business requirements affect previously developed test cases. Also, there are risks associated with the communication process involved in the traditional practice. Most importantly, product quality is adversely affected if the product is scheduled to be delivered within a fixed release date.

These disadvantages associated with traditional testing are removed with agile testing. Unlike traditional, agile allows the testers to get rid of any ambiguity at the correct moment. Moreover, it enables early detection of technical or testing challenges, dependencies and roadblocks. If there are any changes then the same are considered healthy so far as software development is concerned and are included to develop efficient systems. If you are shunning the concept of traditional testing and embracing agile counterpart, then you can observe, that effective team collaboration helps team members to work together and attain a common objective. Most importantly in agile testing, quality matters the most and acceptance criteria is decided long before the developer embarks upon the process of software development.

Steps needed to move from traditional to agile testing

So if you are looking to move from traditional testing to agile, then you can expect the software products that are developed to be released as per the schedules. Unlike the traditional one, where product release is delayed, postponed primarily because there are changes suggested in the specified requirements even at the time of product release. Moreover, requirement study and subsequent writing of test plans becomes a lengthy process for the testers. Conversion to an agile environment for testing purposes require testers to act promptly, implying rapid feedback, thereby allowing the testing and developing team to proceed forward. In agile testing procedure information shared by the testers is meaningful and easily comprehended by the participating professionals. Overall, it can be stated that it is grossly beneficial to the business as a whole.

Benefits of Agile Testing

Apparently it sounds bizarre to even conceive that requirement definition, testing and product delivery can be accomplished within a month. But with agile testing, the time for testing is very much reduced. So a transition from traditional testing to agile testing implies the use of automation. It reduces significantly manual labor so far as testing is concerned. It can therefore be said without any obfuscation that agile testing enhances the efficiency and productivity in IT enterprises.

How Selenium Testing Scripts Can Be Performed on Different Browsers?

Many, almost every software application, at present, are written as web-based app which can run in an internet browser. The efficiency of testing these apps differs greatly among organizations and companies. In the period of highly responsive and interactive software procedures, where many companies are relying on Agile methodology, test automation is becoming a necessity for software projects. Test automation indicates using a software tool to perform repeatable tests against the app to be tested.

To ease the task powerful automation tools are coming up in the market like Selenium, as most of the softwares developed today are Agile adopted and browser based. There has been a massive progress in the features of Selenium that focuses on easy- to- use, competent GUIs and can meet the requirements of most app testers by 90% or more. Selenium holds the top position in the software market with these features:

• Powerful and simple DOM (Document Object Model) level testing, can be employed for nonstop integration with Agile projects
• Supports numerous browsers like Fire Fox, Safari, Internet Explorer, or Opera on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows
• Great flexibility and extensibility, tight integration with browser, unmatched by on hand proprietary tools
• Wires OOP (Object Oriented Programming) languages such as Ruby, JAVA, PHP, .NET, Perl, etc.

Components of Selenium  

There are 4 variations of Selenium, which can be combined or used individually to develop a complete automation suite for web apps. These are:

• Selenium IDE –Enhancing , creating or recording scripts
• Selenium Remote Control (RC)– implementing scripts
• Selenium Web Driver (API) – multiple browser testing
• Selenium Grid – Cross platform testing

Choosing the right tool

Several people start with Selenium IDE. If if you have no prior experience with scripting or programming language, it is better to use Selenium IDE to familiarize with Selenium commands. By making use of IDE, you can perform simple tests swiftly, sometimes within few seconds.

However, to use Selenium effectively, you will be required to build and run tests by using Selenium 1 or Selenium 2 by combining one supported programming language. So, it is solely on you to decide which one to pick.

While writing, the Selenium developers are setting up on the Selenium WebDriver API. For backward compatibility, Selenium 1 is used. Still, both have weaknesses and strengths which can be figured out at the time of testing.

Activities to be performed during testing

• Collect the working flows from clients
• Preparing for test and Selenium framework plan
• Assign talented resources and offer sufficient training to the new resources
• Setting up for software installation and test environment
• Create test scripts with Selenium IDE by using XPath method
• Use Eclipse to convert scripts
• Perform every test in Selenium RC using Eclipse as IDE by Batch Scheduling
• Use WebDriver to run multiple scripts
• Perform all the tests for each build and multiple builds, every day
• Reuse test scripts with fewer modifications like revising scripts for every build
• For speedy actions, generate HTML reports and share it with the team

Areas to be focused while testing

While performing the test, few areas need extensive concentration. These are:

• Selenium tests as a segment of each build
• Depending on build release, execute acceptance tests in regression test suite
• Find bugs in the earlier stages and address the risk of removing bugs in the cycle, later
• Test the existence of static UI elements
• Focus on every navigation links to missing pages or broken links
• Test the functions of input page that comprise of several input fields, check boxes and buttons. Some of these are Account Setting, User Profile, etc.
• Test dynamic elements with different HTML Ids
• Execute test in multiple browsers like IE, Chrome, Firefor, etc.
• Test dynamically varying UI elements like RSS feeds, animation, etc. without having to reload the web page.

It is recommended that those who are new to selenium, and are developing a new test suite from the scrape, it is a good choice to go with Selenium 2, because this variation of Selenium will be supported in the upcoming years.

Application quality is not dependent just on automation: Find out other factors

The success of any software application depends on the quality of the application and is in turn an important factor for the success of the IT organization. Customer satisfaction is an important factor for the success of any company and in case of IT concerns it is achieved through providing the clients with high quality of software applications. There are a large number of factors or aspects that determine the quality and performance of the software application apart from test automation.

Flexibility and Extensibility:

Flexibility may be defined as the ability of any software application of adding, modifying or removing any functionality from the system without damaging the same. Extensibility on the other hand is the ability of a software application in terms of adding more functionality without causing any damage to the system. This can also be thought of similar to a subset of flexibility. The changes in the functionality often occur in accordance to the varying requirements. It may also be seen as an obligation in case the development process ranks as one of the iterative methods. With Change being an inevitable element in the development of software, this makes it to rank as one of the most important properties with respect to the quality of the software application.

Maintainability and Readability:

Maintainability focuses on the modifications regarding error corrections as well as minor ones related to the functions and not the major extensibilities of functions. These modifications are able to be supported with valuable interface definitions, documentations, as well as self documenting codes and may be the code documentations. The relationship between maintainability and documentation is directly proportional. With the documentation being more useful and correct, maintainability also gets enhanced.

Performance and Efficiency:

Performance is generally measured in terms of the time that the software takes to response. This response time of the software needs to be within the acceptable intervals i.e. within a maximum of few seconds.

The response time of the software must not increase with an increase in the transaction count. With the resources being expensive, efficiency of the software needs to be supported with effective allocation of resources.

Scalability:

It has been observed that the response of a scalable system to the user actions is within an acceptable amount of time, even if load increases.

Scalability is of two types Vertical and horizontal. Vertical scalability occurs when more hardware requires to be added for handling effectively a rate of increased user transaction. This should not lead to any changes in the architecture while adding this.

Horizontal Scalability may be expressed as the ability of running a software application on a number of machines that are increasing consistently leading to multiple processing. An ideal scalable system needs to suit both these methods.

Security:

Security is an important attribute of software development as well as its quality. Security is highly significant in terms of mobile based or web or that usually have millions of users and provides the option of remote access to the system.

A security policy needs to be constructed and applied effectively without leaving any points of entry. Constructing a security policy often requires including techniques of authentication and authorization protections against network attacks, data encryptions and more. An effective policy must be aimed at constructing security leaks or else the entire application may collapse within a day not withstanding a single attack resulting in a considerable loss to the developing organization.

Availability, Robustness and Fault Tolerance:

For a software application to be robust enough, it needs to hold on to its availability and not lose it even in the most disastrous situations. This makes it to continue running even if some of the components in the application to fall off or break down.

A robust software application should recover itself, even if the entire application crashes, making sound use of the data and backup hardware powered with approaches of fault tolerance. Always there must be another plan a B or even C, D plans.

Reliability:

Reliability is another factor that determines the quality of the software. It can also be explained in terms of integrity as well as consistency of the software application even while running under conditions of high load. This makes it is relevant to availability as well as scalability as an unreliable system is not scalable.

Testability

A software product must facilitate establishment of an acceptance criteria and support the evaluation or assessment of its performance. This characteristic needs to be built-in at the time of designing the application. This would help in determining if the application is easily testable. A complex design results in poor testability.

Usability

A software application must be usable in the sense that it becomes convenient as well as practicable to use. This feature of the software application is affected by the interface of human-computer. The Graphical User Interface or GUI as it is commonly known as is the software component that is mostly impacted by this

API Readiness – Gallop and SmartBear Joint Webinar

Business organizations are demanding excellence in software and digital media to capture market. In order to   deliver greater efficiencies in reduced time lines, software developers are integrating APIs at staggering speed from public, private and partner resources. APIs help interacting with the software world, saving time and resources the reason why developers relay upon APIs. With the rise of disruptive technologies and adoption of digital technologies in the systems of engagement, quality issues in the use of APIs are getting amplified resulting in loss of brand credibility and trust. IT teams need pragmatic processes, tools and techniques to test & fix bugs in APIs to deliver higher quality. For early risk mitigation, developers need to prioritize the importance of testing APIs for their security, integrity and vulnerabilities.

If already working with APIs one can understand the importance of APIs and testing APIs. If not it must be surprising, What APIs are and how harmful it can be to use APIs without testing.

Starting with what are APIs?

In the simplest terms, APIs are sets of requirements that govern how one application can talk to another. It’s a software-to-software interface. The user is unaware of the interaction between different software which happens at the background before a task is completed. For example: if a user want to book a ticket online for a movie from the website, the website sends the user credit card credentials to a remote application for verifying the information and a movie ticket is issued only after the payment is confirmed. It is called seamless integration where the user doesn’t know what goes on in the background.

How do they work?

An API is a set of functions, procedures, and other points of access which an operating system, an application, a library etc., is made available to programmers in to allow it to interact with other software. APIs and Web services are not visible to Web site surfers and software users. They run silently in the background, providing a way for applications to work with each other to get the user the information or functionality needs. For example:    The icons to share articles on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Reddit. These are links which help to do the service of posting or tweeting without leaving the webpage. The user need not leave the current webpage to do the posting. It makes it easier that one need not develop applications from scratch. It saves time and resources.

API readiness

Testing APIs to track how the API handles problems helps to fix discrepancies.   API testing helps to identify whether the API crashes or handles the problem? When it crashes to how much level is the crash? Shipping software with API failures leads to loss of customers and brand credibility. Ensuring API readiness through testing ensures quality and integrity of the software making it trustworthy software from a reliable branded company.

A real time cost benefit analysis of offshoretesting vs. QA staffing

A real time cost benefit analysis of offshoretesting vs. QA staffing

A software development process is incomplete without testing. After a software product is developed, it is the task of the testers to find out if the product meets the performance and practical requirements. If not, then it is the task of the developers to rework on the project until or unless the performance requirements are met. It is a practice that every responsible and credible IT service provider needs to provide to their clients as based on the quality of products delivered, payments are dispatched from the end users.

Cost Cutting Techniques by Testing Using QA Staffing

If a company has its own testing facility then it becomes simple to conduct testing but at the same time becomes a bit cost effective. Efficient QA staffing or hiring testers on a full-time or contract basis for testing purposes help resolves issues pertaining to handling such IT process.

IT Companies look for profits and that can be attained if cost cutting measures are adopted in the testing procedure. Following cost cutting measures can be attained by hiring testers by an IT firm.

• In this context, it needs to be said that both money and time is saved if the defects in the software are identified early.
• Also once a flaw is detected in the software during the testing process, money is saved if the time taken to rectify the software is less.
• Better customer service helps in comprehending the user requirements and this is a good thing from the testing perspective.
• If the end users demand modification or enhancement in the software, it is necessary for the service provider to respond accordingly.
• For an IT company to deliver quality and efficient services, it becomes easy to identify the lacunas associated with the company’s developers and programmers.

Cost Cutting using Offshore Testing Services

All the above steps do contribute to cut costs so far as software testing is concerned. Yet another method that can be implemented to reduce cost is through outsourcing of software testing. IT companies engaged in the development process have identified that offshore testing contributes significantly to cut costs thereby raising the profit margin. There are a number of service providers that do testing for companies at comparatively low rates.

For a client company who wants its software to be tested by a service provider, does not have to incur unnecessary expenditure on recruiting testers and this cut costs for the company drastically.However, there are certain disadvantages associated with such process. The prime being that the company doing the outsourcing has to depend totally on the service provider doing the outsourced jobs.If the service provider fails to make timely delivery of the projects, then the company image is very much tarnished in front of the end users. Often this results in the company losing business.

But in general it is observed that outsourcing is the preferred choice of most IT companies

Reduction of expenses with resources

• There is a significant reduction of expenses with resources.
• The providers of testing services are not only adept in using the costly testing tools, but they own them.Because of this, the testing process is a cost saver.
• For the small software development firms which do not have the resources to hire a testing team, outsourcing is the best option.

Use of quality software

• In most cases off shore testing is associated with the use of quality software.
• The pertinent service providers usually stick to best practices in the process that incorporates prompt identification of defects, smart approaches in preparing test cases, thereby saving time, effort and cost.

Faster testing cycles

• The testing service providers use skills in automating testing resulting is faster testing cycles.
• They also optimize staffing thereby enabling handling of fluctuations in demands.
• Also, since most of them cater only to the testing process, their focus is to provide quality and timely testing services.

Safe practice

• As compared to QA staffing for testing purposes by IT companies, it is observed that outsourcing is a safe practice provided the service providers approached for accomplishing the tasks have the requisite credentials in terms of experience, infrastructure, human resources.
• Therefore, emerging companies, with limited IT infrastructure prefer outsourcing rather than building in house testing facilities.

The IT companies in this process access dexterous team of software testers. The professionals engaged in such testing process are skilled in using the different testing tools.