A Detailed Guide To SDLC Testing: 6 Steps That You Need To Follow

Testing is one of the essential processes in the software development life cycle. It helps companies in performing a comprehensive assessment of software and ensure that their product fulfills the client's needs. The Software Development Life Cycle testing phase helps companies identify bugs and errors in the software before the implementation phase begins. Suppose software bugs are not resolved before they are deployed and adversely affect the client's business. Besides, that trying to resolve these issues at a later stage could be a substantial cost. The more you delay detecting these issues, the greater the cost you are likely to face.

There are different ways to perform testing in a software development life cycle. The processes used for testing could vary depending upon the software development model, the stage of the process, and the objectives of the testing procedure. Software development life cycle (SDLC) is a process used by the software industry for designing, developing, and testing high-quality software. SDLC testing aims to produce high-quality software that meets or exceeds customer expectations, richest completion within times, and cost estimates. The software development life cycle is also known as the software development process.

SDLC is a structure defining tasks performed at each step in the software development process. ISO/IEC 12207 is an international standard for software lifecycle processes. Its main is to be the standard that defines in which phase of the system life cycle is software testing performed. SDLC is a method followed for a software project within a software organization. It contains detailed plans explaining how to develop, maintain, replace and alter or improve specific software. The life cycle describes a methodology for developing the quality of software and the overall development process. 

SDLC Testing Phase

A typical software development life cycle contains the following stages:

1. Planning and Requirement Analysis

Requirement analysis is the significant and crucial stage in the SDLC testing phase. The senior members of the team perform with input from the customer, the sales department, market surveys, and domain experts in the industry. This data is then used to plan the basic project approach and conduct product feasibility studies in the economical, operational, and technical areas.

Planning for the quality assurance requirements and identifying the project's risks is also performed in the planning stage. The technical feasibility studies outcome defines various technical approaches that could be followed for implementing the project with minimum risks.

2. Defining Requirements

Once the requirement analysis is performed, the next step is defining and documenting the product requirements and getting approval from the customer or the market analysis. It is performed by a software requirement specification document that contains all the product requirements to be designed and developed during the project life cycle.

3: Designing the Product Architecture

SRS is the reference for product architects to come out with the best architecture for the product to be developed. Based on SRS requirements usually, more than one design approach for the product architecture is proposed and documented in a design document specification.

All the essential stakeholders evaluate this DDS. Based on various parameters such as risk evaluation, product robustness, design modularity, budget, and time constraints, the best design strategy is chosen for the product. A design approach explains all the product's architectural models and its communication and data flow representation with the external and third-party modules. The internal design of all the modulus of the recommended architecture should be clearly defined with the minutest of the details in DDS.

4: Building or Developing the Product

In this page or software development life cycle, the actual development is started, and the product is built. The programming code is generated as per DDS during this stage. If the design is performed comprehensively and systematically, code generation could be accomplished without much hassle. 

Developers should follow the organization's coding guidelines, and programming tools like compilers, interpreters, debuggers, etc., are used for generating the code. Different high-level programming languages such as C, C++, Pascal, Java, and PHP are used for coding. The programming language is chosen concerning the type of software being developed.

5: Testing the Product

This stage is generally a subset of all the stages as in the modern SDLC models testing activities are mostly involved in all stages of SDLC. Nevertheless, this stage refers to testing the only stage of the product. Their product defects are reported, tracked, fixed, and retested until they reach the quality standards defined in the SRS.

6: Deployment in the Market and Maintenance

Once the product is tested and is ready for deployment, it is released formally in the appropriate market. Sometimes product deployment occurs in stages as per the business strategy of the organization. The product may firstly be released in a limited segment and tested in the real business environment. 

Based on the feedback, the product could be released as it is, for which some suggested advancements in the targeting market segment. After the product is released in the market, its maintenance is performed for the existing customer base.

SDLC Models

Various software development life cycle models define and design that are followed during the software development procedure. These models are also known as software development process models. Each process model accompanies a series of steps unique to its type for guaranteeing success in software development. 

Following are some important and popular SDLC models followed in the industry:

1. Waterfall model
2. Iterative model
3. Spiral model
4. V-Model 
5. Big Bang Model

Agile model, RAD model, Rapid Application Development, and Prototyping models are some other related methodologies.

Conclusion

The software development life cycle is a systematic process for building software that guarantees the quality and correctness of the build software. SDLC testing in software engineering provides a structure for a standard set of activities and deliverables. The senior team members conduct the requirement analysis phase followed by the feasibility study stage that includes everything that should be designed and developed during the project lifecycle. 

The system and software design documents are prepared as per the requirement specification document in the designing phase. In contrast, developers start building the entire system by writing code using the chosen programming language in the coding phase.

Also Read: Types Of Software Development