STLC, Phases & Deliverables

• STLC – Introduction

Software testing life cycle identifies what test activities to carry out and when (what is the best time) to accomplish those test activities. Even though testing differs between organizations, there is a testing life cycle.

Basic requirements in software testing life cycle is to control/deal with software testing – Manually and through Automation.

• Phases of STLC

There are 5 basic phase of STLC.

Analysis and Planning - All requirements are analyzed. To freeze the scope of the testing, a high level Test Plan is then prepared.

Test Designing - (Test Scenarios, Test Cases and / or Test Data) is prepared on the basis of the requirements.

Testing - A walk-through of the application is done for Sanity check once the code is freeze and given to QA. If everything is OK, then actual Testing starts by executing the Test Cases.

Filing bugs and regression - Bugs are filed and Retesting and Regression of bugs is done once the bugs are fixed.

Prepare a closure report- Closure Report is prepared if everything goes well.

• Deliverables of STLC

Also known as Testing Deliverables or Artifacts.

Software testing process can produce several artifacts.

Test plan
A test specification is called a test plan. The developers are well aware what test plans will be executed and this information is made available to the developers. This makes the developers more cautious when developing their code. This ensures that the developer’s code is not passed through any surprise test case or test plans.

Test case
A test case in software engineering normally consists of a unique identifier, requirement references from a design specification, preconditions, events, a series of steps (also known as actions) to follow, input, output, expected result, and actual result. It can occasionally be a series of steps (but often steps are contained in a separate test procedure that can be exercised against multiple test cases, as a matter of economy) but with one expected result or expected outcome. The optional fields are a test case ID, test step or order of execution number, related requirement(s), depth, test category, author, and check boxes for whether the test is automatable and has been automated. Larger test cases may also contain prerequisite states or steps, and descriptions. A test case should also contain a place for the actual result. These steps can be stored in a word processor document, spreadsheet, database, or other common repository. In a database system, you may also be able to see past test results and who generated the results and the system configuration used to generate those results. These past results would usually be stored in a separate table.

Test script
The test script is the combination of a test case, test procedure, and test data. Initially the term was derived from the product of work created by automated regression test tools. Today, test scripts can be manual, automated, or a combination of both.

Test data
The most common test manually or in automation is retesting and regression testing. In most cases, multiple sets of values or data are used to test the same functionality of a particular feature. All the test values and changeable environmental components are collected in separate files and stored as test data. It is also useful to provide this data to the client and with the product or a project.

Test suite
The most common term for a collection of test cases is a test suite. The test suite often also contains more detailed instructions or goals for each collection of test cases. It definitely contains a section where the tester identifies the system configuration used during testing. A group of test cases may also contain prerequisite states or steps, and descriptions of the following tests.

Test harness
The software, tools, samples of data input and output, and configurations are all referred to collectively as a test harness.

The complete STLC, its phases and Deliverables explained in this article is in short.
These are covered more briefly in their respective chapters.