Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)

What is STLC?

Ans: STLC stands for Software Testing Life Cycle. STLC is a sequence
of different activities which is performed by the testing team to ensure
the quality of the software or the product or In a easy way we can say
that, STLC is a step by step procedure to test any new software.

What are the phases of STLC?

Ans: Phases are dependent on the nature of the software or the product,
time and resources allocated for the testing. There are six major phases
of STLC.

1. Requirement Analysis: During this phase of STLC, analyze and
   study the requirements. When the customer gives the requirement then company product manager collect the requirement and come to over the company and explain that requirement to the technical team. After that, team will analyses the requirement and create a document where they gather/collect all the requirement And System Study is study of the requirement. Making the technical team understand the
   requirement is nothing but system study and the project manager will
   make the requirement understandable to the technical team.
   • Entry Criteria: SRS (Software Requirement Specification)
   • Exit Criteria: List of all testable requirements.
2. Test Planning: Testing plan is nothing but all the future testing related activists it means how many testing engineers are going to work on the particular release, which testing engineers is going to work on which particular model, how many days testing engineers will take to complete the testing process for the particular release, which automation tool they have to use for particular release, this all are things will be the part of test plan. It's a plan or document which comes future related activities.
   • Entry Criteria: Requirements Documents
   • Exit Criteria: Test Strategy, Test plan, Test Effort estimation and cost of the project.
3. Test Case Designing: In this phases there are multiple cases the first one is (a) System study: Which is done by individual test engineers. Suppose, Five test engineers and each are assigned with particular module like A module is going to test by one engineers and B module is going to test another engineers so it’s nothing but each and every individual testing whatever the module is assigned to the particular engineers he/she will study or understand that particular module in detail. (b) once after the system study is done engineers have to identity all possible scenario which is called IPS. Whatever scenario have to test in application that scenario have to identify. Each and every testing engineers will identity all possible scenario for particular module. (c) Then they have to write all test cases after this they get it review. (d) Once after review is done engineers has to do fix review comment. (e) When it done then get the approval. (f) When approval done then the test case will store in test case reporting tool.
   • Entry Criteria: Requirements Documents
   • Exit Criteria: Test cases, Test Scripts, Test data.
4. Test Environment Setup: A test environment is a server that allows you to run the test cases you have defined. The test environment  includes more than just setting up a server to run tests on. It also involves hardware and network configuration. In other words, a test environment enables you to create identical environments every time you need to test your product. It’s the most important tool for a testing engineer in order to have confidence in the testing results.
   • Entry Criteria: Test plan, Smoke Test cases, Test Data
   • Exit Criteria: Test Environment
5. Test Execution: Test Execution is nothing but we will be having the set of test case with you and you will be having an application by looking into the test cases you will test the application and mark the test cases as pass or fail.
   • Entry Criteria: Test plan document, Test cases, Test data, Test Environment.
   • Exit Criteria: Test case execution report Defect report.
6. Defect Reporting: If the fortune of functionality is not working according to the customer requirement then QA tester will raises defect which is nothing but defect reporting. Test engineers they get defect for;
   • Wrong implementation
   • Missing implementation
   • Extra implementation
7. Test closure: when defect reporting is done. In this stage test lead will prepone the report after preponing the report test lead will tell that which test engineers involved in which particular module testing and how many bags we found out and how many test case are in the past stage, how many test cases are failed. what is past test case percentage all will get in this stage.
   • Entry Criteria: Test case Execution report,Defect report
   • Exit Criteria: Test closure report.

What are Entry Criteria and Exit Criteria in STLC?

Ans: There have Entry and Exit Criteria for all levels in the Software
Testing Life Cycle (STLC).

Entry Criteria: Entry means when to start testing and Entry Criteria
is a set of conditions that must be met or fulfilled before we can start
the testing process.

Exit Criteria: Exit means when to stop testing and Exit Criteria is a
set of conditions that must be met or fulfilled before we can certify
the testing process as complete.

What are the Benefits of Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)?

Ans: STLC benefits :

• It increased consistency and effectiveness as project requirements are
  analyzed.
• Clear and defined goals for test products, which helps track the
  project’s process.
• The confidence in each feature passes testing before adding additional
  features.
• Tests are designed in a meaningful manner.
• Specifications are clear, which helps the team.
• It’s a systematic approach that quickly resolves bugs and defects in
  the product.
• Verify that project requirements are met.