What steps are needed to develop and run software tests?

 

The following are some of the steps to consider: 
- Obtain requirements, functional design, and internal design specifications and other necessary documents 
- Obtain budget and schedule requirements 
- Determine project-related personnel and their responsibilities, reporting requirements, required standards and processes (such as release processes, change processes, etc.) 
- Identify application’s higher-risk aspects, set priorities, and determine scope and limitations of tests 
- Determine test approaches and methods – unit, integration, functional, system, load, usability tests, etc. 
- Determine test environment requirements (hardware, software, communications, etc.) 
- Determine testware requirements (record/playback tools, coverage analyzers, test tracking, problem/bug tracking, etc.) 
- Determine test input data requirements 
- Identify tasks, those responsible for tasks, and labor requirements 
- Set schedule estimates, timelines, milestones 
- Determine input equivalence classes, boundary value analyses, error classes 
- Prepare test plan document and have needed reviews/approvals 
- Write test cases 
- Have needed reviews/inspections/approvals of test cases 
- Prepare test environment and testware, obtain needed user manuals/reference documents/configuration guides/installation guides, set up test tracking processes, set up logging and archiving processes, set up or obtain test input data 
- Obtain and install software releases 
- Perform tests 
- Evaluate and report results 
- Track problems/bugs and fixes 
- Retest as needed 
- Maintain and update test plans, test cases, test environment, and testware through life cycle.