How Do You Know When To Stop Testing

In today’s scenario, most of the tester has this confusion regarding testing procedures that when should they top testing their product.

When is the Right time?

Testing is an endless process but still, there has to be a point where we are supposed to stop testing. The most common factors that are taken into account when deciding to stop testing are:

• Deadlines of the project eg.release deadlines.
• Percentage of passing test cases
• Rate and Test budget.
• Coverage of code functionalities,requirements etc.
• Minimum accepted bug
• Durations of beta and alpha testing period.

The ace targets of these factors should be outlined in early test planning phase of the project, right after the discussions conducted and agreed by the whole team along with the customer. The test engineers will then keep an update on testing metrics in order to meet the set target by the whole team.

Testing Metrics

Testing metrics is a better way to help testers to keep a track over progressed work and make more effective decisions when their project is at stake. Important metrics on which tester can keep an eye include:

• Percentage completion: a total number of executed cases/total number of test cases.
• Percentage of test cases passed: Total number of passed test cases/Number of executed test cases
• Percentage of test cases failed: Total number of failed test cases/Number of executed test cases.

Normally, a test engineer will set a limited number of test cases to run in a single test case instead of testing them all in one go. This practice makes it easier in keeping the record of the number and assess apart from the quality of software product.

Testing Metrics Interpreting

The decision to stop testing can be made analytically by using the data obtained from the metrics. A test engineer can stop do testing when:
Based on the passed ratio to the failed cases-there are three ways to depict this:

• Exit when all the test cases are passed
• Exit when passed test cases are reached to its minimum limit.
• Exit when failed test cases reach its maximum limit.

Exhausting all the cases for execution during a test run.

Other advanced metrics that can be considered in the decision to stop testing are:

• Mean time between failure(MTBF): accessed by recording the average operational time before the system failure.
• The density of Defect: Measured by recording the defects related to the size of software.
• Coverage metrics: Can be calculated by recording percentages of instructions executed.

A number of bugs along with their severity.

A tester can decide to stop if any of the above scenarios are depicted.The general aim for anyone involved in the project would be to reduce the risk of catastrophic errors happening when the product is released.

Conclusion

Software testing is an endless activity which can be carried on and on to without any exit point but knowing about the above-defined terms and avoiding the recursive pattern is very important to accomplish a successful project.
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