Manoj Chauhan

About Manoj Chauhan

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Test Plan Software

Reduce Challenges Of Software Testing Documentation With Test Plan Software

In the present era, the pressure to launch high-quality products into the market means a product/ software must undergo multiple testing rounds to ensure its accuracy, security, and issues that should be fortified in real-time. Despite that, developing accurate test plans or carrying out manual or automated testing is not as feasible as it appears. Due to this, testers encounter many challenges along the testing lifestyle, making the entire process more taxing. As a business, if you’re also facing challenges while testing your software, fortunately, there is a way to deal with it via Test Plan Software. 

In this guide, we will walk you through test plan software and how it helps reduce software testing documentation challenges. So, read along to learn about it and make your testing documentation error-free. Let’s start from scratch. 

What is test plan software?

Today, all software, websites, or apps must be secured with regular updates to keep up with changes in technology and user expectations. Therefore, the test plan is the most crucial aspect of any software development process, and it outlines how your products’ features will work (as they’re supposed to do) efficiently. 

There comes test plan software like TestForma, which is a tool acting as a catalyst in software testing documentation planning. In the present world, where customers want products to be ‘perfect’ that can meet their requirements, test plan software works wonders to ensure that the product is ‘ready to use’ before its final launch/ delivery. 

Critical challenges of software testing faced by testers 

Here is a list of software testing documentation challenges you can encounter while testing the products (with solutions to cope). Look at them below: 

Non-defined quality products 

Every software product tends to abide by all the quality requirements when the standards are clearly defined. Unfortunately, perfectly defined quality standards are not always the case, making testing challenging. Poorly defined quality standards mean there is no clarity on testing requirements, guidelines, specifications, or features. Clearing these quality standards before releasing the products in the market is essential and can be checked through test plan software. 

Test environment duplication 

If there is no realistic test environment, testers will come across issues that are reflected under very specific circumstances, which ultimately reduces the chance of discovering real-world bugs. That’s where test plan software helps create a real-world environment to check and eradicate bugs from the test plan. 

Missing documentation 

The next challenge which testers encounter is missing documentation scope (functional and non-functional) and specific requirements of the product during software testing. This leads to both developers and testers missing out on significant aspects of what clients want. In order to avoid such situations, test plan software plays a crucial role in creating comprehensive documentation with particular project requirements in detail. 

Inadequate testing 

To ensure that the application, software, or any product works in a flawless manner, proper testing is essential. No doubt, every application thoroughly needs to be checked and tested in various environments before its final delivery. Since clients expect the software team to deliver products in a shorter period of time, this creates pressure on the team to pace up the testing, which leads to inadequate testing. Luckily, test plan software turns out to be a saviour in helping testers conduct accurate testing of software or application.  

The objectives of a test plan software

The foremost objective of a test plan is to create proper documentation which describes how the software works. Basically, the document must describe what needs to be tested in the application, how it will be tested, and who is responsible for doing so. By writing a test plan and using test plan software, all team members can easily communicate their roles to one another and create SMART objectives for their test plan, including:

S – specific 

M- Measurable 

A – Achievable 

R – Relevant 

T – Time-bound 

 

With the help of test plan software, testers can achieve these objectives in real time. Since test plan software contains detailed information on what the test should accomplish. 

The importance of a test plan software 

Everyone knows that the risk of failure increases when there is no robust plan; the same goes for software testing. Any project without a test plan makes the testing phase untraceable, unmeasurable, and unmanageable. Thus it is crucial to understand why a test plan is requisite for your software project. So, whether you’re building open-source software or an application, test plan software is essential to deliver a final product to the clients. 

In traditional development formats, making changes to any application or software was a stiff and time-consuming process. Thanks to advanced technological test plan software like TestForma that helps identify risk areas, allocate resources efficiently, and determine the order of testing activities. Thus, a test plan becomes a useful reference document ensuring that the application works smoothly. 

To conclude, Test Forma is a quintessential test plan software for application test managers. It will help you save a lot of time in testing and ensure that the final product is worth using.

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What is Automation System Testing, and How Does it Work?

Automation is the new normal in the contemporary corporate world to ensure optimum accuracy and eliminate any scope of errors. It provides the smooth processing of business operations and allows businesses to scale. All this has become possible due to automation software and programs. Nowadays, many organizations are involved in developing automation systems for different aspects of a business, and they conduct automation system testing to ensure the safety and reliability of the tools. Thus, they ensure that their product is consistent, efficient, and of premium quality. 

In this write-up, we will discuss the automation system testing and its mechanism, but before this, we must know about the automation system. 

Automation System: An Overview 

An automation system combines different sensors powered by innovative technologies, actuators, and controls to complete a function with little to no human intervention. This branch of engineering is known as “Mechatronics,” which integrates mechanical and electronic systems. Reducing human involvement is the major goal of an automated system. A human operator is susceptible to errors and exhaustion, which can result in several issues. With the use of an automated system, industries can significantly improve profitability, rate of production, safety, and quality.

Why Is Automation System Testing Crucial? 

Before introducing an automation system in the market, makers perform thorough automation system testing to assess its quality and efficiency. Two major factors make testing automation systems essential. The primary reason is that it is the best technique to ensure and confirm the dependability and safety of production systems. Inadequately tested automation systems may result in hazardous or even lethal situations. Additionally, businesses that use automation systems that have yet to be well-tested may have production delays due to prolonged outages and expensive repairs. 

The second reason is automated system testing is required to maintain a high standard of product quality. Automation systems that have yet to undergo enough testing can produce faulty, unreliable, and inefficient goods that result in significant financial losses and brand harm through recalls and unfavorable customer reviews. Companies typically go to considerable lengths to thoroughly test their systems for these reasons. However, completing a thorough automated system testing comes with several difficulties.

How Does It Work? 

An automation system testing includes three phases: planning, execution, and documentation. In the planning phase, testers have to design test plans for each component and an integrated plan for the entire system. Then, testers have to execute the test plan in both offline and online modes, and it includes multiple execution instances for various iterations and installation stages. The final stage of automation system testing is documentation in which the test plan and execution results are mentioned step-by-step in an Excel file or Word document. Testers have to keep monitoring the progress to ensure the accuracy of the system and check the status of the test execution to detect any fault or loop. 

Challenges Related To Automation System Testing 

Automation system testing is a manual process with heavy reliance on Word and Excel (or similar tools); therefore, testers have to face a lot of challenges associated with using these tools to plan, execute and document test cases. As large-scale automation system testing includes extensive test plans, managing and updating long and detailed documents becomes incredibly time-consuming. Moreover, proper formatting of such documents also becomes complicated for testers. Another issue that testers face during automation system testing is tracking the progress of execution. Thus, with such problems, automation system testing becomes expensive and time-consuming. Since an automation system includes multiple features and interfaces, it’s always challenging to manage changes and maintain test plans to keep them up to date with the current state of the system.   

TestForma Makes Automation System Testing Easy 

Performing automation system testing manually is a highly complex and error-prone task with Word and Excel-like tools. But, there is an unmatched solution that eliminates all the pain points of automation system testing. TestForma, a cutting-edge, user-friendly software solution, addresses the difficulties in test plan creation, execution, and documentation to speed up testing. It makes creating, executing, and documenting test plans as easy as possible since we are quite aware of the difficulties that arise while testing complicated, large-scale systems.

With TestForma, you can arrange your test cases to divide complex systems into manageable segments. You can also easily track test steps, cases, and group execution progress.

TestForma does all the updating and tracking of the execution state for you. With reduced user interaction, its execution engine allows you to swiftly perform and mark your test stages. One can test your automation systems faster and more rapidly with TestForma, get higher test coverage, and improve business outcomes with quicker release cycles and higher ROI. TestForma contributes to the testing process optimization at each stage of automation system testing.

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Biggest Challenges Of Acceptance Test Management With Excel And Word

While implementing any software to process, store, illustrate, or manage data, software validation and tests become essential. The majority of the testing, including functional testing, regression testing, security testing, and integration testing, is performed in the development platform by IT members and programmers to detect bugs and ensure that the product meets the essential functionalities and is developed collaboratively with the business.

Acceptance testing is the concluding test performed before the software release. In contrast to functional testing, which developers perform, acceptance testing is performed by people who understand what users and businesses usually require. Furthermore, the acceptance test is carried out in a virtual environment designed to meet the production environment, allowing users to test real-world scenarios with real data.

Planning, implementing, monitoring, and analyzing acceptance test results necessitate stepwise participation from stakeholders and end users, who are often located in different places. Because these users have specific jobs, acceptance test managers frequently need help engaging them in testing activities. Many project managers attempt to track and manage these processes using Microsoft Excel or Word, but this only complicates things for test managers and testers because the manual process involves many challenges. Some of them are mentioned below. 

Difficult to manage change

Test managers must plan test coverage, monitor test results with every test run, create defect reports, establish communication between programmers and testers, ensure acceptance tests are performed on the most recent software release, and so on. Accomplishing all of this through Excel and Word, any large-scale implementation is difficult because: 

  • Keeping test plans updated is arduous.
  • Making manual edits or additions on hard copy gets messy
  • Scanning hard-copy documents as test reports are tedious
  • Documents can get extremely big, with thousands of pages.

Too Many Cooks

Managing acceptance tests on an excel sheet or word document is tedious. While many people update results, anybody can edit excel or word sheets, hampering your tests. Additionally, there can be misplacement and copy-paste errors while gathering data from different files while constantly trying to keep formatting intact, page breaks, section breaks, and so on. 

Excel is a computing genius but not a strategist

Undoubtedly, Excel is good at calculating and organizing data. Still, it is not that smart to track how the overall testing process is going, which is vital for a test manager. Also, it can not calculate the average resolution time per supplier. Additionally, manually connecting your Excel sheets to compare multiple years of data is impossible. Excel is a good solution for a limited amount of data, but it is not a big data solution. Excel was never intended for such tasks. Additionally, printing excel documents is tedious and presents formatting challenges.

Security issues

Mimecast’s research has discovered that cyber attackers can trick Excel’s feature known as Power Query to enable attacks leading to unauthorized access to Excel sheet admin rights. The Power Query feature combines data from multiple sources within excel, such as a dataset, second worksheet, document, or website. However, connecting to another component can be misused to link to a suspicious web page containing malware. As a result, attackers can target tainted Excel spreadsheets to create disruptions, such as getting admin rights or configuring backdoors. Attackers don’t need to engage in a highly advanced attack; they can simply open Microsoft Excel and use the program’s tools. With such security concerns, you can’t rely on test result data managed in Excel. 

Besides security, file integrity is also a severe concern, as numerous people have access to the file. Additionally, the inability to use old assets, considerable time consumption on test coverage, and inconsistent formatting are other issues that might occur. Environment safety is also a significant concern in managing acceptance tests with Excel or Word files since you need to work with printed-out documents to create reports.  

TestForma: An Exclusive Tool To Manage Acceptance Test 

While acceptance test management with Excel and Word is hectic and time-consuming, TestForma is a boon for software test managers. It is a software testing tool that is tailored to manage and update test plans, keep test progress, and track status. It can help save a ton of time in testing large-scale applications. You can stop worrying about document formatting and leave document generation to TestForma.

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Manual vs. Automated Testing: What Are The Pros and Cons

The significance of quality analysis for software and hardware products is hidden from no one. You can’t omit this step, whether you are on the delivery or receiving end. If anything, the quality analysis should be performed on both ends; before delivering the product to ensure that the quality you are providing is top-of-the-line, whereas on receiving the product to ensure that the product meets your business needs.

Speaking of testing, the world is divided into two parts – one that prefers manual testing and the other that relies on automated testing. However, the question still lingers – which one should be chosen? Which testing is better? Read along to find answers to all the questions.

Manual Testing Vs. Automated Testing

Both manual and automation system testing can be performed to test products; however, the method is usually based on the project’s cost and benefits.

Manual Testing And Its Types

As the name suggests, manual testing is a human actively testing hardware and software products. Simply put, manual testing compares the product requirements to the actual outcome to spot defects and bugs. Moreover, manual testing is similar to beta testing. The analyst tests the products as a user and then determines whether the product acts appropriately and meets the benchmark. If yes, the product is further processed. Otherwise, issues are reported.

Manual testing is suitable for smaller software applications, where the budget is low, the team size is small, and the feature set is manageable for a human to test. For larger software applications, though, where the codebase and the team size is large, manual testing can be very expensive.

On the other hand, manual testing is almost always necessary for hardware applications as well as integrated hardware-software systems. In fact, manual testing and sign off by qualified personnel is mandatory for many safety-critical applications.

Types of Manual Testing

  • Exploratory Testing
  • Ad-hoc Testing
  • Usability Testing
  • Acceptance Testing

Automated Testing

Automated testing is a modern method to verify a product meets a set of requirements; however, it is constrained to software testing. All the tester/analyst has to do is set a test plan or use predefined actions to run the test appropriate for their product models. Tools for automated testing will compare the product’s expectations to its realities and deliver one of the two results – the report of actual and expected outcomes will align, indicating a bug-free product. However, if the results don’t align, it suggests that your product contains bugs or code errors, and you need to re-run the test after rectifying the bug.

Types of Automated System Testing

  • Performance Testing
  • Regression Testing
  • Load Testing
  • Data-Driven Testing

Pros vs. Cons of Automated Testing

Though automated system testing has its own advantages, it also brings a bag full of disadvantages to the table. Here, we have curated a table comparing the pros and cons of automated testing,

Pros Cons
With automated testing, one can run multiple tests automatically as part of the software building process. A lot of effort goes into the integration process of automated testing.
Automated testing reduces the cost of regression testing. The implementation of automated testing tools is very expensive.
It allows analysts to perform tests on large volumes of data quickly. A single test plan can work as equivalent to multiple manual quality analysts. Since it relies on external software, a higher skill set is required to test the applications.
Requires maintenance of the automated testing pipeline by qualified IT personnel to fix bugs, improve and scale.
Automated testing is only applicable to software applications. It has very limited or no applicability to testing hardware or hardware-software integrated systems.
Automated testing is not applicable for safety-critical software only as they need to be tested and certified by qualified personnel.
In general, automated testing is not applicable to industrial automation systems due to platform incompatibility issues.
Automated testing suites are usually platform-specific.
Automated test scripts fail to catch non-trivial issues. Manual testing is necessary to catch non-trivial issues and edge cases.
Not applicable to user experience testing for software apps.

Pros vs Cons of Manual Testing

Mentioned below are the advantages and disadvantages of manual testing.

Pros Cons
No integration efforts are required. Testing process is inefficient.
Does not require a deep technical skill set. Managing changes is difficult and cumbersome.
Zero downtime – can test anytime. Test execution and writing reports are time consuming activities.
Applicable hardware, software and integrated systems. Testing tools are outdated.
Necessary for safety critical systems. Expensive for large scale applications.
Manual testing is platform-agnostic.
Manual testing can catch non-trivial edge cases.
Manual testing is applicable user experience testing for software apps.
Low cost for small applications and products.

 

If you are working on large, non-safety critical software applications, such as database applications or web apps, automated testing is strongly recommended to keep testing costs manageable and maintain software quality. However, it is important to note that automated testing is not a silver bullet for all kinds of applications.

For testing hardware, integration applications (such as robotics or industrial automation) automated testing is insufficient, sometimes even inapplicable. For safety-critical applications, manual testing and certification by qualified personnel is necessary. In addition, for small scale applications the setup and maintenance costs of automated testing is not feasible. On the other hand, manual testing can be very expensive due to inefficiency of testing activities and lack of proper software tools. This is where TestForma comes in.

Test plans can easily be designed, updated and adjusted for different applications with TestForma. Tests can be executed fast without interruptions. And you spend zero time writing documents thanks to auto-generation of test plans and reports. TestForma simplifies manual testing by overcoming the inefficiencies of manual testing activities. With TestForma, people with minimal knowledge can also run tests, i.e. you don’t need a software developer or IT support to design your test plans or execute your tests. When manual testing is performed with TestForma, it can be as efficient as automated.

futuristic interface. woman engineer touching virtual screens.

Test Management Tools: What Makes Them So Essential For a Business?

Test management is a process that consists of creating and updating test plans, executing tests and documenting results. For products and software applications designing test cases to verify all requirements and edge cases is the first step of test management. Then, tests are executed, results are analyzed and documented for stakeholders to inspect. The process is iterative by nature. As issues are fixed and new features are added, test plans must be updated, and test execution must be repeated to verify all new and existing features work correctly. Due to its iterative nature and depending on the complexity of application, test management can be extremely time consuming and expensive. Test management tools are software applications that aim to solve this problem by helping organize test plans, execute tests and track results.

Why Do You Need a Test Management Tool?

A test management tool, such as TestForma, can help projects save significant amounts of time and money by streamlining the testing process. Using an efficient software tool can boost your test coverage and enable you to produce results quickly. As a result, your product quality, stability and reliability will increase and your business will be set up for success.

However, there are a variety of options in the market and it is important to choose the right tool for the job. For that purpose, you should correctly identify your business needs, avoid or mitigate risks as you compare different test management solutions. We discuss some important factors to consider when selecting a test management tool below.

Factors To Consider While Selecting A Test Management Tool

What kind of testing do you need for your application?

The two kinds of testing to consider are manual and automated testing. In manual testing one or more human associates actively participate in test execution. On the other hand, in automated testing some or all of the test cases are executed automatically with the help of an external (usually) third party software application. Both manual and automated testing have their advantages and drawbacks. You should consider them carefully. If you need a test management solution for manual testing, then TestForma is a great option.

Who will use the software tool?

Usability is a significant factor and it is overlooked way too often. Some tools are usable only by the tech savvy. The learning curve for such tools is often steep, requiring a significant training investment to become productive with the tool. Even after the learning curve is overcome, navigating through complex user interfaces and workflows during test plan design and execution can cause inefficiencies, errors and frustration. If you need a user-friendly test management tool, you should definitely consider TestForma.

Where will you execute your test?

If you are testing a web app, you are most likely in an office setting. You probably have  ample desk space, an ergonomic chair, a wide screen monitor maybe two. You are connected to a stable wireless network and have access to high-speed internet. However, if you are testing an industrial robot, a wind turbine or a high speed train you might have to conduct your tests in a much different setting. You might need to stand up or sit inside a moving vehicle, holding a laptop or a 10-12 inch tablet, and operate with no internet connection at a remote location. 

If your setting resembles the second scenario, then a web-based test management solution may be a no-go for you. What you need in that case is a fast, responsive app that can work fully in offline mode with no concerns of losing data. You need a touch friendly GUI that adapts nicely to any screen size. And most importantly, you need your test management software to be intuitive and self-evident because humans are less successful in executing cognitively demanding tasks in uncomfortable settings. If this is what you need, you should try TestForma.

Do you have cybersecurity or data privacy concerns?

Web-based test management solutions require a database server. This server usually lives in a cloud and is accessible via the internet. But what if your data is sensitive and you need to take all possible measures against cybersecurity threats? Similarly, what if your data storage solution has to comply with privacy standards such as HIPAA? In those cases you will likely need to host your database server in house, which means additional costs of hardware and continuous IT support. If your budget does not allow such costs, then you should consider a test management software solution, such as TestForma, that does not necessarily need a database server to be fully functional.

Do you need test reports? And do you need a custom document format?

Some test management solutions can generate PDF, Word or Excel reports for test results. This can be a useful feature, making it possible to store and share test results as a standard document type. However, test management tools that can generate documents usually offer no capabilities to customize document formatting. If your company has a standard document template or formatting guidelines you will need to modify the generated document manually. 

However, modifying an existing document to match a different formatting is usually very annoying and disproportionately time consuming. Thus, people usually either live with the odd document formatting, or write test reports from scratch in the desired format. The one exception is TestForma, which offers many customization features for document formatting and can even generate documents based on completely custom document templates. So if you need a test management solution that can auto-generate documents with customizable formatting, you should check out TestForma.

What is your budget? How many licenses do you need?

We have discussed usability aspects and features of test management tools extensively. Let’s think about the cost for a bit. Some test management tools are very expensive on the order of hundreds of dollars monthly for a single user. If you need a number of licenses, the recurring license costs can be significant. On the other hand, there are cost-efficient test management tools like TestForma that provide all necessary features for an efficient test management software application.  

TestForma is a leading test case management tool and is ideal for establishing requirements and risks, designing test cases, arranging test runs, analyzing test findings, and managing associated issues. To make your job simpler and more reusable, the entire process is managed by a test case management tool. You can start your free trial online or simply schedule your free demo with us.