Quality Assurance Testing
Need
to complete information management quality assurance testing and want
practical suggestions to ensure rapid project delivery?
What is quality assurance (QA)
testing?
The
objectives of the QA testing phase is to ensure that all
software components meet requirements and are ready to transition to
production.
What is a test plan?
A plan is a communications tool, which clearly sets testing expectations for all team members. The plan
should identify:
- Test
strategy;
- Test
plan;
- Test
data
strategy;
- Test
deliverables;
- Resource
plan;
- Training
considerations; and
- Test
schedule.
Best practices
 Should focus on testing a set
of components to ensure
that they meets requirements.
Should be
performed by an independent test team in a test environment that "mirrors" the production environment.
Should test every requirement
and all system, user and production
support documentation.
Test cases, test data and test
results should be defined as
configuration items and handed over to the production support team as
part of the release package.
Testing Procedures
Prepare test plan
and identify:
- Test objectives;
- Methodology that will be used;
- Conditions that impact the test;
- How tests will progress from one test to the next;
- Expected test results;
- Test constraints; and
- Test acceptance criteria e.g. what determines a
successful test.
Create test data.
Document expected results.
Create the test
environment.
Move test data to test environment.
Create an object migration plan to
identify:
- All code included in the test;
- All data definition language (DBL) scripts;
- All data manipulation language (ML) scripts;
- Any other scripts such as Unix shell scripts;
- All system test results;
- All test data; and
- All project documentation impacted by the code.
Validate that all objects in the
object migration plan comprise a planned production release i.e. a set
of
components intended to move to production as a planned release.
Back-up test
environment.
Prepare a test plan
to identify script execution schedule and roles and responsibilities.
Review
test plan with production support team, or release team, that may be
required to migrate code and/or execute scripts in the test environment.
Migrate all test
objects to the test environment.
Execute work streams that comprise the test.
Validate test results. If issues are
discovered:
- Document defects in the defect tracking tool;
- Assign defect severity;
- Assign defect to appropriate team for resolution;
- Resolve defect;
- Update unit test data and test results if needed;
- Re-run system and/or integration test if appropriate;
- Place updated unit, system and integration test data
and test results in project documentation repository;
- Check code into code repository;
- Restore test environment test data;
- Create new version of object migration plan to
identify changed objects;
- Migrate modified objects to test
environment;
- Execute work streams that comprise the test;
- Confirm that the test achieves test objectives; and
- Close appropriate defects.
Document test
results.
Place test data and
test results in project documentation repository.
Quality assurance testing strategies
Should be
performed by an independent test team in a test environment that "mirrors" the production environment.
Should test every requirement
and all system, user and production
support documentation.
Should include reconciliation
tests to manually confirm the validity of data.
Should use a sub-set of production data to reduce time lost to lengthy load processes.
Summary...
The
objectives of the quality assurance testing phase is to ensure that all
This should be an independent test, performed in an independent
environment under configuration control.
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