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This technical guide explores software testing methodologies—the strategies, processes, and environments development teams use to conduct rigorous software testing. Learn about the testing essentials for delivering quality software and how automated solutions accelerate testing across the software lifecycle, regardless of development methodologies like Waterfall, Agile, or Iterative.
Software testing methodologies are the strategies, processes, or environments development teams use for testing. These methodologies enable developers, engineers, and programmers to conduct rigorous software testing as part of a go-to-market strategy. Common methodologies include:
The two most popular SDLC methodologies are Agile DevOps and waterfall, and testing is very different for these two environments. Following is a brief overview of all three methodologies.
In the waterfall methodology, formal testing is conducted in the testing phase, which begins upon completion of the development phase. The waterfall methodology for testing works well for small, less complex projects. However, if requirements are not clearly defined at the start, it’s extremely difficult to go back and make changes in completed phases.
The waterfall methodology is popular with small projects because it has fewer processes and players to tend with, which can lead to faster project completion. However, bugs are found later in development, making them more expensive to fix.
The Agile methodology is well suited for larger development projects. Agile testing is an incremental methodology where testing is performed at the end of every increment or iteration.
Additionally, the whole application is verified upon completion of the project. There’s less risk in the development process with the Agile methodology because each team member understands what has or has not been completed. The results of development projects are typically better with Agile when there’s a strong, experienced project manager who can make quick decisions.
When taking a DevOps approach to testing, or continuous testing, there’s a collaboration with operations teams through the entire product life cycle. Through this collaboration, development, and operations teams don’t wait until the software is built or near completion to do testing. That means the software delivery process is faster, defects are detected earlier and are less expensive to resolve.
Continuous testing uses automated testing and automation tools as components of the software development pipeline to provide immediate feedback on any business risks that might exist.
In the iterative methodology, developers create basic versions of the software, review, and improve on the application in iterations—small steps. This is a good approach for extremely large applications that need to be completed quickly. Defects can be detected earlier, which means they can be less costly to resolve.
The most common types of software testing include:
Other important types of testing not covered in this paper include:
V-model validation
It’s difficult to determine when to stop testing. Testing is a neverending process and no one can claim that software is 100% tested. However, there are criteria to consider that can serve as indicators for putting a stop to testing.
Your team can deliver quality software that’s safe, secure, and reliable with automated testing tools/solutions that span every stage of the development life cycle. With platforms that provide a unified set of tools to accelerate testing, teams can shift testing left to the early stages of development while maintaining traceability, test result recordkeeping, code coverage details, report generation, and compliance documentation. Automated solutions provide the following types of testing:
Static analysis using modern advanced tools like Parasoft C/C++test include data and control flow analysis, fault handling, memory management and pattern based analysis which are specified in coding standards like MISRA, CERT and many others. In addition, static analysis tools provide analysis metrics and support peer code reviews.
Static analysis tools like Parasoft C/C++test prevent and detect a variety of errors and warnings:
A static code analysis technique for determining the control flow of a program. Modern advanced static analysis tools like Parasoft C/C++test use sophisticated control and data flow analysis to detect complex defects and security vulnerabilities.
A technique for gathering information about the possible set of values calculated at various points in a computer program. Data flow analysis is a critical aspect of advanced static analysis tools that helps detect complex errors such as tainted data vulnerabilities.
Detects and warns developers about uninitialized variables.
Warns developers of various memory management bugs such as buffer overflows, memory leaks, resource leaks, and variable overflows (integer number overflows).
Warns developers about poor type conversions where values might exceed type boundaries.
Teams use walkthroughs, code reviews, and inspections to verify design and implementation. Static analysis tools automate code inspection, flagging errors and software weaknesses. Tools are essential for establishing and enforcing compliant coding standards such as MISRA and CERT.
Static analysis tools like Parasoft C/C++test help prevent and detect safety and security coding issues, but also, memory leaks, dead-code, variable initialization gaps, device by zero, and many other problems.
Beyond static analysis, Parasoft C/C++test automates many of the repetitive tasks involved in unit and integration testing, with results consolidated and analyzed through Parasoft DTP. For system level testing, particularly for applications and devices dependent on network interactions, Parasoft SOAtest delivers comprehensive automation to validate end-to-end behavior.
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