Quality Assurance Testing - The Part Where You Make Sure It Works

Updated 05-06-2020

Testing is one of the most important steps in web development and should never be skipped or rushed. It’s a foundational part of quality assurance and helps ensure new development updates work as expected and do not cause unexpected issues.

Before any web application update is pushed live by our team at AVIBE, it’s put through a three-stage testing process—sometimes several times, depending on the complexity of the update.

Our Quality Assurance Testing Processes

At AVIBE, we have standardized testing processes that are thoroughly documented and executed daily. Here’s a breakdown of the testing phases we put all development updates through:

• Once web development is complete in the beta environment, updates and software functionality are:
• Tested by the web developer
• Tested by quality assurance specialist
• Tested by project manager
• If the update doesn’t introduce bugs in the beta environment, it is then pushed to the staging environment where it’s tested again by:
  • The quality assurance specialist
  • The project manager
  • The client
• If the update doesn’t introduce any bug in the staging environment, it is then pushed to the production environment and is live to the public. We use the new feature from start to finish on production just to make sure everything is perfect.

Essential Software Testing Checklists

Checklists are a tester’s best friend. Here’s a quick list of some of the feature-specific testing checklists our team uses:

• File System (Exports, Imports, Uploads, and Downloads) Checklist
• Accessibility Checklist
• Performance Checklist
• User Interface and Responsive Design Checklist
• Payment Systems Checklist
• Form Submissions Checklist

Relying on checklists like these can greatly streamline your testing process. They’re extremely helpful for project managers and developers who may not have formal QA training. But they are also useful to any quality assurance specialist looking to document or formalize their own testing process. They help confirm that crucial steps were taken before an update goes live.

Automated Testing Tools We Love

Manual, human testing is critical to any QA process. But some processes are completed more efficiently and just as well by software.

Automated testing tools allow our team to write testing processes once and then run it again whenever a new update is made to a web application. The process confirms that the core functionality of the application is still working after new updates take effect.

We’ve tried a multitude of automated testing tools over the years at AVIBE. The following tools are exceptionally useful in our automated testing processes:

TestCafe: Device and environment testing

TestCafe lets you test an application or website on multiples browsers, machines and mobile devices at the same time. This tool is great for checking how an application will display to users on different mobile devices running different operating systems. TestCafe includes recording and organization features that allow testers to re-order and re-record testing steps during their testing process. TestCafe’s features and UI are very intuitive—testers and Project Managers with limited web development or coding experience can easily use and understand this tool.

 

 

Postman: API performance and functionality testing

Postman saves quality assurance testers’ time by automating API tests and mocking HTTP requests. It allows testers to monitor the performance and functionality of APIs. With Postman, testers can send requests, save responses, add tests, and create workflows all via one easy-to-learn interface. It also logs each request for detailed debugging. Postman is a lifesaver for any team frequently setting up new API processes or adjusting legacy APIs.

 

 

Tenon.io: Accessibility compliance testing

Tenon.io is a tool that can automatically identify 508 and WCAG 2.0 issues within websites or web applications. A tester simply enters the URL of the site she wants to test for accessibility compliance and voila. 508 and WCAG 2.0 requirements help ensure that website or app content is effectively communicated to people who are visually impaired. An example would be when a website allows users to scale up font sizes and use alt tags to hear written descriptions of images. Anyone working on government, educational and institutional websites and web applications must understand 508 and WCAG 2.0 requirements and test for it. Ideally, any website or application, regardless of industry or purpose, should comply with accessibility guidelines.

 

WebPageTest: Load speed testing

WePageTest is another easy-to-use tool to test the speed and load time of a website. Similar to Tenon.io, the only thing a tester has to do is enter the URL of the site. Performance and speed are essential to ensure that visitors to your site don’t experience frustrating lag or timeout issues when accessing content. Read more about website performance in our Talk Nerdy to Me Blog, “Speed Up Your Website with Optimization”.

 

 

Tip for developers: Take notes on how to test an update and setup test cases as you are writing code to streamline the testing process. Your QA tester and Project Manager will thank you later.

Why Test, Test, And Test Again?

Our team thoroughly tests and documents issues or bugs that arise throughout the development lifecycle using automated tools, various testing checklists, and the expertise of our quality assurance specialists. If you have a bug or an issue with your legacy ColdFusion or ASP.NET web application that needs resolution you’ve come to the right place!