“Standard” Testing Process

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I realize the term "standard" is strange, since testing very much seems project dependent, but if I layout a pretty standard scenario I am hoping to get feedback on the types of testing I should be concerned with.

My team is in the process of creating a medium sized data driven web application. We are using a fairly agile process. For the most part the requirements have been set, but we get some changes last minute as well.

Up until now, we have been doing mostly manual testing. We are trying to automate as much as we can. I have been looking into some tools and here are the types of tests that I think I need to concern myself with:

• Unit Testing (Test Driven Development Style) - This is a little late in the game since a lot of code has been written, but going forward I plan to make tests before implementing functionality. For the purposes of this question we can even assume I haven't started the project.

• Integration Testing - Since our application is on the web, I guess I use the term integration testing to mean the linkage between pages? What is a good open source tool for this (let's say .NET)?

• Regression Testing - It seems we get this for free with our Unit Tests

• Data Integrity Testing - Not sure what you call this, but just the idea that the data we got from the client to load into the application is valid.

• Functional Testing - Is this typically done in the GUI? Are there good code driven options?

• Performance and Load Testing - Make sure the application responds quickly even under stress.

I was always told that the QA team should have almost as much time as the development team to look at the application, but it seems like many aspects can be automated these days. Is the official "QA Team" much less needed these days?

My main questions are:

• Is this a reasonable testing effort for a mid-sized project with a saavy tech team? Are there big things that I am missing or should concern myself with?
• What are typical cycles of these testing efforts? (e.g. Unit testing running on each check in or nightly)?
• How are typical QA man hours compared to development man hours these days?

Thanks so much!