Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) Explained
STLC stands for software testing life cycle. It is a sequence of specific activities conducted during the testing process to ensure software quality goals are met. In this process, each activity is carried out in a planned and systematic way. It involves both verification and validation activities. Different organisation have different phase in STLC process. Each phase has different goals. These are popular following phase in STLC.
- Requirement analysis
- Test planning
- Test case development
- Test case environment
- Test execution
- Test cycle closure
Requirement analysis: In this phase Test/Quality analyst, analyse and study the requirements and talk to the other team member to find out whether the requirements are testable or not. If any difficulty, missing or not understand any requirements, then testing team follow up with the various stakeholder like business analyst, technical manager etc to better to understand the details of requirements.
Test planning: This is very important phase in STLC phases. In this phase testing team manager decide the test plan and strategy along with efforts and cost estimate for the project. Once the planning phase is over testing team can start with test case development activities.
Test case development: In this phase it involves the creation, verification and rework of test cases and test script after the test plan is ready. The activities in this phase, create test case, automation script (if applicable) & review and baseline test cases and script & create test data (if test environment is available). The testing team start the development process of test case for individual units.
Test case environment: It decides the software and hardware conditions under which a work product is tested. This is very crucial phase in STLC, and It requires help from other members of the organisation. Some times testing may not be involved in this phase if the development team provide the test environment.
Test Execution: In this phase, testers can execute all the test cases. Tester will identify the bugs and report details. Then developer can fix the bugs and, again tester retest the product to make sure new defects don’t materialised.
Test cycle closure: This is a final phase in STLC. In this phase testing team provide a test closure report. During the closing phase testing team checks its deliverables. It includes relevant details to the testing work, such as the test strategy, test case document, automated test scripts and test result. Then testing team will complete and close incident reports.