Software Testing Standards are a set of rules or standards that are expected to be met in a particular product or service offered by a company. Compliance to these set of rules is mandatory for a company as it defines the extent to which a company is performing its duty legally and is not engaged in any sort of malpractice. Moreover, doing so will also ensure the delivery of high-quality products.
There are many organizations around the globe who develop and implement different standards to improve the quality needs of their software. This article briefly covers some of the widely used standards related to Software Testing.
Latest Software Testing Standards
Standards for software testing are developed by the International Standards Organization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission(IEC), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119
As of 2018, ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 which consists of five international standards is prescribed for software testing. It was developed in the year 2007 and released in the year 2013. Let us get information on the same one-by-one.
1. ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 (Part 1- 2013)
This software testing standard focuses on meaning, definition and different concepts of all the other standards in the 29119 series. It helps an individual in understanding the vocabulary on which other standards in the series are built as well as provides relevant examples to show the way in which each concept works in practice. In short, this standard provides an overview of software testing concepts and helps in understanding the concepts presented in this series.
2. ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 (Part 2- 2013)
This part of the series defines a generic process model for software testing that can be used within any software development life cycle and in any organization. According to this standard, the testing process will work on three layers process that would include organizational test specifications such as organizational test policy and test strategy, test management, and dynamic testing.
3. ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 (Part 3- 2013)
This standard provides templates for test documentation that covers the entire software testing life cycle. The templates can be tailored to suit the unique needs of each organization and the life cycle model. All the templates align with the test process defined in ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-2 and can be produced by applying all the processes that are defined in the standard. Since it is designed in alignment with the process defined in the ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-2, this software testing standard is likely to surpass the IEEE 829 standard.
4. ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 (Part 4- 2013)
The techniques present in this standard can be effective in a way to develop test cases that can be used to present evidence that each requirement mentioned under the test have been successfully met or there are certain defects that need to be rectified. In short, this series provides standard definitions of software test design techniques (also known as test case design techniques or test methods) and corresponding coverage measures that can be used during the test design and implementation processes defined in Part 2.
5. ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 (Part 5- 2013)
This standard covers keyword-driven testing, an approach to specifying software tests used in the software testing industry. The keywords are basically the names which are associated with a set of actions that are required to perform a specific step in a test case. By using keywords to describe test steps instead of natural language, test cases can be easier to understand, to maintain and to automate.
ISO/IEC 9126
The standard deals with certain aspects to check and determine the quality of software application. The aspects are as follows:
- Quality model
- External metrics
- Internal metrics
- Quality in use metrics
It also presents with some basic set of quality attributes for any software such as:
- Functionality
- Reliability
- Usability
- Efficiency
- Maintainability
- Portability
Other Software Testing Standards
There are some other useful standards a software tester must know which are related to QA and software testing. They are:
- IEEE 829
This software testing standard is practised in different stages of the testing and is used for proper document formatting.
- IEEE 1059
This standard supports in guiding software verification and validation
- IEEE 1061
It has the technique to establish better quality and validating the software with the quality metrics
- IEEE 12207
It is a standard for software life cycle processes and life cycle data.
- IEEE 730
This software testing standard is for software quality assurance plans
- IEEE 1044
A standard for the classification of software anomalies.
Implementing the afore-mentioned standards may enable a company to deliver better products in the market as a lot of these are encouraging to follow authentic and reliable software techniques and approaches as a whole.
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