Whether you are trying hands on an e-commerce platform or a simple app, a software testing checklist is a key to ensuring that the application works properly. It also ensures that the users will find it helpful & appealing.
Undoubtedly, software testing and quality assurance are vital to the success of any software product. Statista says that as much as 23% of the development budget goes to testing, more than one-fifth of the project cost.
The infographic below depicts the scenario of the changing budget allocation for software quality assurance over the years.
Source: Statista-QA Budget Allocation
Fortunately, most businesses understand & value this critical concept. However, finding the time to run through all the tests can be back-breaking. The first step to software testing is developing an execution plan.
Consider the following:
- Does your team need training?
- What tools will be required?
- How will communication work within your company and with external vendors or clients?
- Will you have to hire any additional QA specialists or consultants?
Assembling a checklist helps ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.
Here’s an ultimate software testing and quality assurance checklist that will help you get your product out the door with confidence while still allowing you to cover all of your bases adequately.
- Usability Testing
- Functional Testing
- Compatibility Testing
- Security Testing
- Performance Testing
Let us study & investigate each of them in detail:
Software Testing & Quality Assurance Checklist
1. Usability Testing
Source- ProductPlan
Definition: Usability testing, or user testing, means giving the software to users (actual or simulated) and asking them to perform specific tasks. The purpose of the test is to find out how easy or difficult it is for the users to accomplish their goals using the software’s interface, what confuses them, what they like, and what works well or poorly.
Under software, quality assurance checklist usability is performed at multiple stages of the software and sometimes with each update. It may be performed at any stage of development to improve the software’s usability. The test’s purpose will determine how it gets conducted & the test subjects you should use.
Goal: To Verify the Use & Effectiveness of a Product
How to Conduct Usability Testing:
- Plan the testing session
- Recruit participants
- Design multiple tasks & activities for the session
- Run the testing sessions
- Analyze the insights by comparing the actual results with the desired results
- Resolve the unacceptable differences
- Retest
Checklist for Usability Testing:
- Eliminate all the spelling or grammatical errors from the web page.
- Ensure text alignment.
- Keep error messages concise, to the point, and free of grammatical mistakes.
- Properly align the fields.
- Place ample space between field labels, columns, rows, & error messages.
- Use standard format and size for different icons.
- Place the homepage link on all the pages.
- Remove/repair broken links and images.
- Display confirmation message for any update & delete operation.
- Check your website screen adaptability for various screen resolutions.
- Optimize user-friendliness.
2. Functional Testing
Definition: Functional testing involves taking your application from its parts and making sure that it behaves like software, meaning it does what you expect it to do. Think of functional testing as taking an application off the screen and seeing if it still works when you use it in the real world.
The scope of functional testing may vary from executing simple one-step commands and verifying correct output (smoke tests) to complex cases involving error conditions and multiple workflows (end-to-end tests).
Goal: To verify that each software section performs its functions and operates as expected.
How to Conduct Functional Testing:
- Analyze & determine the functions that you want to perform.
- Develop input data based on the function needs.
- Analyze and choose the expected output data.
- Conduct the test case.
- Compare the actual & desired output.
- Resolve the issues
- Retest
Checklist for Functional Testing:
- Validate all the mandatory fields.
- Ensure asterisk sign displays for all compulsory fields.
- Check & ensure zero error messages for optional fields.
- Consider leap years in calculations.
- Check numeric fields only accept numbers and neither symbols nor alphabets.
- Ensure proper calculations for division by zeros.
- Ensure that a popup is displayed when the user exceeds the character limit.
- Check for the display of confirmation messages for software update and deletion.
- Ensure to test for all the input fields with special characters.
- Check & validate timeout functionality.
- Validate sorting functionalities.
- Check button functionalities.
- Ensure lucid privacy policies.
- Validate the email functionality of the system.
- Check software functionalities over different browsers.
3. Compatibility Testing
Source: Test Rig
Definition: Compatibility testing involves checking if the software can run on different platforms, browsers, and operating systems without encountering any issues. It also involves ensuring that all the strategies used to develop and support the software work in unison with all these environments and that the end-user experience is not affected by any incompatibilities whatsoever.
Goal: To check whether the software runs appropriately over different browsing and operating systems.
How to Conduct Compatibility Testing:
- Analyze the platforms on which you want to deploy the software.
- Develop device compatibility library for each platform.
- Develop a drawing of various environments.
- Start testing on each platform
- Resolve the issues.
- Retest
Checklist for Compatibility Testing:
- Check the software performance over different browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera).
- Check the correct display of data over desired platforms.
- Ensure the HTML version of the software is compatible with selected browser versions.
- Check the quality of displaying images over different browsers.
- Check the functioning of the fonts over other browsers.
4. Security Testing
Definition: Security testing is an umbrella term covering several security assessments, including code audits, penetration tests, and vulnerability scans. These assessments help you ensure your software’s code is hardened against exploitation and will work fine when deployed.
It plays a vital role in maintaining software security and safeguarding the software from being hacked by hackers, crackers, or any other person who may want to steal information from your company’s software program.
Goal: To uncover vulnerabilities in a software application to plan, conduct, and complete appropriate remediation activities. Once discovered, these vulnerabilities must be prioritized and fixed based on risk.
Note: Quality assurance services are incomplete without security testing, and you must perform them adequately. Security testing involves multiple kinds of tests. It does not have any general test process and largely depends upon what you are checking for.
How to Conduct Security (Penetration) Testing:
- Create test scope
- Scan for vulnerabilities
- Attempt penetration into the software
- Analyze the results & create a report
- Eliminate the compromised hosts or vulnerabilities
- Retest
Checklist for Security Testing:
- Ensure that the critical web pages containing crucial data, including passwords, credit card numbers, security question answers, etc., are submitted via HTTPS (SSL).
- Personal information like passwords, credit & debit card numbers, and security answers are displayed in an encrypted format by default unless otherwise selected by the users.
- Regulate the implementation of the password rules on all authentication pages, including forgot password, change password, etc.
- Ensure that the old passwords automatically stop working once the user updates their passwords.
- Check & verify the error messages details are correct while displaying critical information.
- Check and confirm that the user fails to navigate the app after logging out.
- Ensure that no one except the owner holds the right to view the software’s source code.
- Test and confirm that the account gets locked when entered with the wrong credentials several times.
- Ensure that the cookies fail to store passwords.
- Test for typical SQL injection attacks.
- Verify that only the admin can access the administrator profile.
- Test the application for Brute Force Attacks.
5. Performance Testing
Source: TestingXperts
Definition: Performance testing is the process of evaluating how well an application performs under load or with other possible issues that may affect its performance. It gets typically expressed as response time, especially in the case of web applications. Performance testing is of utmost importance on the software QA checklist, and its positive result is vital for growing enterprises.
It involves executing a set of predefined tests to verify that the system under test (SUT) performs according to the specified requirements at regular and stressed workloads, thereby ensuring that the SUT meets its performance objectives.
Goal: To understand the behavior of an application under the expected workload and stress conditions so that you can address any potential bottlenecks before releasing it to the public or your customers.
How to Conduct Performance Testing:
- Identify the Test Environment and Tools.
- Define parameters & criteria of the performance
- Plan & Design Tests
- Setup Test Environment & Tools
- Execute the Performance Tests
- Resolve the detected issues
- Retest
Checklist for Performance Testing:
- Check the stability of the application under diverse load conditions.
- Check scalability of the application under multiple load conditions.
- Analyze whether the present architecture provides optimum support at peak levels.
- Analyze the software bottlenecks.
- Analyze the infrastructure bottlenecks.
- Check for the impact on the response time of the software with new updates.
- Analyze software performance under diverse load volumes.
Wrapping Up
Building a product is all about iteration, so it’s essential to keep an open mind. It’s worth taking time before your first release to document your processes.
A checklist can help you run through things to ensure your software product or service is delivered correctly. A well-written test plan or test suite will ensure all aspects of your system are verified before it goes into production.
The above is a comprehensive testing and quality assurance checklist, and it gives you a head start when you’re ready to put yours together. For more resources, connect with a software testing company.
