July 2017 - Testbytes Software

What is Bucket Testing and How is it Performed?

Posted on July 27, 2017 by tbsupadminnxtbackendacc

Commonly, a large number of business houses rely on their website’s design, content and other features to gain popularity. However, this becomes easier and much more ensured when a thorough testing and study of the complete website is done by the owners. And, this is what bucket testing is meant for.
Bucket testing, also known as A/B testing or split testing, is a kind of testing which is conducted on (at least) two different versions of a website to check which one performs better. This test is based on a set of key metrics like clicks, downloads or purchases that are measured from each page variation.
Companies that are into online selling and dealing majorly rely on bucket testing to maximize their profit by optimizing the conversion rates for their websites and landing pages.

How it works?
Any bucket test begins with a hypothesis, which can be in the form of text, design or usability change. This hypothesis is based on a team’s decision which believes that incorporating a particular change in real-time situation can work effectively to improve conversion rates.
On conducting the test, if it is found that a particular variation would be able to perform better than the control page for key metrics, the necessary change is incorporated in the website and landing page design.
There is no limit on the number of bucket tests that can be conducted on a particular page. One can continue to conduct these until he/she is satisfied with the outcomes of the new change.
For instance, there is an existing landing page for a free magazine. This page, also known as control or Variation A, will include all the relevant information about the magazine along with a sign-up form and a ‘Submit’ button.
A bucket test can be conducted on this page with a minor textual change incorporated at its bottom that will replace the word ‘Submit’ with ‘Get your free copy’. This page with the new change will be known as Variation B. The metric to be measured during this test would be the number of visitors who successfully fill the form completely.
Since, it is an ad-campaign landing page, the probabilities are very high that there will be a large number of visitors on the page. However, only a few will successfully complete the form. In such a situation, when the key metric is measuring the number of people completing the form and the results are not satisfactory, the bucket test will be conducted again with some other variation.
Common elements to test
One should have a clear understanding about the elements that can impact their website or landing page’s conversion rate. Some of the most common elements that are tested include:

Headlines and sub-headlines such as altering the length, size and font.
Images such as the number of images on each page, their placement, type of imagery and subject matter.
Textual such as varying the number of words, style and font.
Call-to-action (CTA) buttons such as ‘Buy Now,’ ‘Sign Up,’ ‘Submit’ or ‘Get Started.’
Logos of customers or third party sites.

Optimizing conversions
The basic purpose behind creating any website for a business firm is to generate maximum leads by attracting a large number of visitors. Therefore, a lot is spent by the companies to meet this goal.

However, incorporating simple changes in terms of text, image or layout can benefit the company. With bucket testing, there is no need of subjective opinions about the page’s design or layout. The quantitative data collected from this test can drive the decision.

Challenges in Implementing Automation Testing in an Agile Environment

Posted on July 25, 2017 by tbsupadminnxtbackendacc

Test automation is an important part of mobile software testing. By using automated testing services, companies accelerate the process of software testing and expand the performance area. However, when it comes to implementation of automation testing in an agile environment, there are a lot of challenges.
If these problems are not addressed, there is a good chance that software automated testing might fail.

In agile development, the focus in on building the right product and cutting down the long-term risk associated with software development. Agile development process promotes and favors change, and to keep the change within the permissible constraints, investment in the test automation is compulsory.
Moreover, investment in continuous integration is necessary to curtail feedback cycles and to evade the execution of the repetitive task.
A key fundamental of agile development is that testing is done at every stage and regular assessment of the working of product that is being developed. Implementing teams face many challenges, a few of which have been mentioned below. A well-organized test automation process helps tone down these challenges:
Sparse Test Area
Change in coding leads to poor test coverage as the changes were expected beforehand. Regression automation (which ensures that any change in the code hasn’t altered any existing functionality and software is working as per requirement) could be a good solution.
Unplanned Breaking of Codes Due to Frequent Changes
Since the codes are altered on a daily basis, the possibility of code (comprising of working features) breaking, is much high. To tone down this problem, a proper automation process has to be crafted with continuous integration.
Sparse API Testing
Most mobile apps are now developed with a service-orientated architecture that reveals their APIs to everyone, thereby allowing third-party developers to supplement the solution. When designing APIs, it is possible to neglect API testing, due to the high complexity of its implementation. Testing of application programming interfaces requires high coding skill set, which can be done using automation tools. This makes certain that APIs are tested thoroughly every time.
Performance Issues
More the functionality of the software more will be the complexity of its code structure. To make it easy, more lines are added, and it further results in performance issues if the focus sidelines the end-user performance experience. The solution is to find out the line of codes causing performance issues and their impact over time. A variety of load testing software can assist in the search for the slow area and can record the performance over time, to make the performance efficient from version to version.

Complex Mobile Testing
The manual process of mobile testing is a time-consuming process, and the complexity is further increasing the number of new arrivals in the market. To ensure that the proper functioning of the code, there is a requirement of well-built automation software to help mobile app testing services.
Automation testing in the agile environment and its approach is decided based on the requirement of the project, as different projects require different automation tools.
There are IT service providers who excel in automation testing services and Testbytes is one among them. Consult our experts and learn how a right software can improve the performance and productivity.

5 Major Types of Test Automation Frameworks

Posted on July 17, 2017 by tbsupadminnxtbackendacc

Test automation frameworks uses a software to execute tests and then determine whether the resulted outcomes and the predicted outcomes are the same or not. Every organization needs software testing adequately, as quickly and thoroughly as possible. To accomplish this, organizations are turning to use automated testing methods.
As test automation frameworks are application independent, it has the ability to expand with the needs of each application. It promotes automation technologies to improve test coverage and gain better quality products. These frameworks help testers to save thousands of manual test execution hours and reduce costs significantly.
Let’s briefly look into the 5 main test automation categories and its functions:

#1) Linear Automation Framework:
This is the most simple framework of all types. Here, individual scripts are used for each test case and they are executed individually. This process enables the conversion of small or medium sized manual scripts to corresponding automation scripts.
Key Features:

Very little planning is required to work with this framework
Testing doesn’t take much time
A tester does not need detailed knowledge of the framework as it uses record and playback to create linear scripts
Created scripts are independent of each other

#2) Module-based Testing Framework:
This framework is based on object oriented programming method and uses the concept of abstraction. While testing, the application is divided into different modules, where each module consists of individual test scripts. The separation of modules is done using an abstraction layer, so that if any changes occur, it wouldn’t affect the other modules.
Key Features:

This framework includes a high level of modularization, which reduces cost and makes maintenance much easier
It’s pretty much scalable
If defects are detected, only that part of the test script needs to be changed. The rest remains untouched
Create new driver scripts for performing tests easily

#3) Data-Driven Testing Framework:
In this type of testing, the necessary inputs and expected output results are stored in separate data files. Here, a single driver test can execute all the necessary test cases with different sets of data. A driver script consists of functions like reading the data files, navigating through the entire program etc.
Key Features:

It reduces the number of overall test scripts to implement all the available test cases
Test data used can be created before test implementation gets ready or even before the testing system or environment is set up
When it comes to maintenance and fixing of bugs, this framework ensures greater flexibility
To generate test cases, less amount of codes are used

#4) Keyword-Driven Testing Framework:
This is an application independent framework that utilizes data tables and self-descriptive keywords, which explain the functions to be performed on the testing application.
The external input data file showcases the functions through ‘directives’, which are seen within the test scripts. These directives are called keywords. Therefore, this keyword based testing is considered to be an extension of the data-driven framework.
Key Features:

Keywords can be re-used in multiple test cases
An automation expertise is not required to create new or maintain the existing test cases
Reduce the number of overall test scripts
Use a minimal amount of codes to generate test cases
For each test, the functionalities are documented in a table as step by step instructions

#5) Selenium Automation Framework (SAF):
SAF is the most widely used, customized, open-source framework today for automated web application testing. As it reduces the initial coding efforts, SAF increases the efficiency of automation than any other framework.
SAF helps enterprises to speed up the testing mechanism by using accelerators at the test design layer and provides a comprehensive reporting strategy for managing tests.
Key Features:

Intuitive and user-friendly interface for creating and executing test suites
Flexible, robust and extensible framework to carry out test automation on diverse sets
Enables users to perform multiple testing processes for web apps
Detailed reports on test execution results with consolidated summary and snapshot of errors
SAF is built on open source tools, libraries or frameworks that reduce cost for users
Avoid redundancy on test case execution
Increased test coverage to enhance quality and reliability of the end product
Has high interaction with Selenium community, therefore, enables quick updates and shorter learning curve
Increases flexibility of used resource and time

In order to move with the pace of software testing process, development and delivery, it is essential to implement the most effective, reliable and reusable test automation frameworks. It’s not advisable to still hang on to the traditional methods as tools alone can never provide a long-term automation success, when compared to the other latest test automation frameworks.

Different Types of Mobile Application Testing

Posted on July 13, 2017 by tbsupadminnxtbackendacc

The demand for mobile application testing services is at an all time high. Businesses, focusing on apps, do need the help of testing services to make their app a success. Thousands of apps are flooding into the app market daily. Unfortunately, most of them remain as a zombie in the app stores.
Lack of awareness about mobile app testing is one of the main reasons for making your app unnoticed in the app stores. We are trying to give you an idea about different types of mobile application testing via this article.

Table of Contents
1) Functional Testing
2) Performance Testing
3) Memory Leakage Testing
4) Interrupt Testing
5) Usability testing
6) Installation Testing
7) Security testing
8) Recover-ability Testing
9) Compatibility Testing
Let’s learn about different types of testing process involved in mobile application testing services and how does it differ from desktop testing:
1) Functional Testing

You have to do functional testing in order to make sure that your app is working as it is needed.
Mobile apps need lots of human consideration while testing and as it’s time consuming, complex and exhaustive process, it is unwise to perform functional testing on devices manually. So, always perform it automatically.
In the case of desktops, this is a type of black-box testing which aims at checking whether system function is proper as intended and can users operate it with ease.

2) Performance Testing

Performance Testing can be called as an interesting phase of testing. Here a tester addresses a set of varied challenges such as draining of battery owing to heavy battery usage, bandwidth problems while switching from 2G to 3G or Wifi, difficulties while transferring heavy files because of low memory, etc. Therefore, the purpose of Performance Testing is to understand the performance of an app under varying loads and different users.

Even though, the idea of performance testing of desktops is irrelevant, as normally it is assumed to have only one user.
Here individual functions such as Use Case, configuration, troubleshooting are tested.

3) Memory Leakage Testing

It’s important to perform the memory leakage test to make sure your app is utilizing optimized memory on different mobile devices.
When compared to computer systems, the inbuilt memory of a mobile device is very low. Most of the OS environments shut applications that are consuming too much memory.
So, testers must ensure that an app does not slow the mobile devices by performing mobile leakage testing.

4) Interrupt Testing

It’s natural that we face many interruptions while using an app. Some of the common interruptions are receiving SMS or incoming calls, issues while connecting external devices, inserting power cable when the app is running, etc.
To make sure that your app is able to withstand all these interruptions; a tester is supposed to perform interrupt testing in mobile devices as well as desktops.

5) Usability testing

The success of an app depends on its flexibility to use. A good app should be able to give amazing user experience to the customers. To ensure that your app is user-friendly, usability testing services may help you.
Usability testing in desktop differs from mobile application testing as it tests distinctive features like configuration, customization, high personalization and diversity of users.

6) Installation Testing

It’s important to check the consistency of your app during installing and uninstalling processes.
Frequently crashing apps during these processes do not survive in the market.
Installation testing checks whether the software is compatible with the desktop/mobile and it does not affect the navigation or the flow of other apps.

7) Security testing

If an app is vulnerable to security threats, people hardly use that app. So, you have to ensure the credibility of your app by performing security testing services.
Security testing helps you in giving assurance to your customers that your app is free from security threats. Similarly, desktop testing demands more security with respect to its access, along with data protection.

8) Recover-ability Testing

While recovery ability testing, crash recovery, and interruptions during transactions are tested.
Recovery ability testing mainly checks how an app works on transactions when there is an app failure, and also analyses whether the system (be it mobile or desktop) recovers the data after suspended connections.

9) Compatibility Testing

Compatibility Testing is performed on mobile phones to know whether the app works on different devices.
As there is a number of devices with different screen size, resolution, hardware and software functionality, versions, etc.
Compatibility testing determines the user interface of the application is as per the desired screen size, no text is partially inaccessible or invisible.

Compatibility testing for desktop apps aims at checking whether desktop apps are compatible with different platforms such as Mac OS, Windows, Linux, etc., report defects and fixing them.

Even though new devices come up every day, the fundamentals of testing use almost the same logic for both mobile and desktop testing.
In spite of all these similarities, there could be differences in some point of view. Comparing to desktop testing, mobile software testing seems to be much difficult as they need to test configurations, work on screen size, storage limitations etc.

5 Major Benefits of Using a Bug Tracking System

Posted on July 4, 2017 by tbsupadminnxtbackendacc

Any issue in design, requirement, specifications and coding that cause incorrect results is called a bug. In a software development life cycle, tracking bugs is one of the most important steps and without which the entire process would be incomplete. Bug tracking is important for every product to maintain quality, to save time and money. Selecting a right bug tracking tool can help you improve software quality assurance.
Now let’s see the major benefits that a bug tracking system provides:

Deliver High Quality Product

A bug tracking system assures that detected bugs are fixed. It helps to remove flaws in the product by controlling the work of each team member. The system can track problems and analyse efforts taken by team members to fix a bug or an issue. This results in delivering efficient product on-time within a given budget.

Improve Return on Investment (ROI) by Reducing the Cost of Development

A bug tracking system can prioritize bugs and assign issues. This helps to spot repetitive problems and concentrate on important issues. The development team will be able to focus on high priority bugs rather than wasting time on smaller issues. This improves team’s productivity and reduces cost of development.

Better Communication, Teamwork and Connectivity

A bug tracking system provides better communication through chat interfaces and email notifications. This reduces the communication gap and informs the right person to test or fix bugs on time. The centralized data system provides access to real-time data that helps in attempting new bugs, exploring application and preparing clear reports.

Detect Issues Earlier and Understand Defect Trends

The most obvious advantage is that it allows companies to keep a record of the bug issues that are detected, who fixed them, and how long it took to fix a particular issue. A bug tracking system detects bugs in the formal testing phase. This helps to create a bug-free data in the production stage.
This system provides dependable metrics that can be referred in future to know the type of defects previously reported. The team can relate bugs to change codes, tests and other data that can be used for analysis of defect trends.

Better Service and Customer Satisfaction

A bug tracking system allows end users to report issues and bugs directly on their applications. Common issues can be analysed and solved through product modifications. Most of the tools are designed in such a way that you can use it easily without any special training.
It provides automated response to end users. They get updates and status of development through alerts.
This also provides better and relevant service to customers by allowing feedbacks and suggestions.
A good bug tracking system results in happy and satisfied customers. Less or no bugs leads customer to use the product efficiently, they find products more reliable, trustworthy and even may recommend it to others.

Conclusion
A bug tracking system is relevant to find, fix bugs and other related issues to reduce cost of development and save time. If a defect management system is used right, then you understand your work atmosphere better, thus improving overall efficiency.
By using this, a company can manage resources in a better way and offer solutions much faster. Bug tracking can be used in each and every stage of the development process, thus helping developers to be content and more productive. This needs to be done rigorously and if you are not using it, then probably your development efforts can go in vain.