Test Life Cycle

1. Requirements stage
2. Test Plan
3. Test Design.
4. Design Reviews
5. Code Reviews
6. Test Cases preparation.
7. Test Execution
8. Test Reports.
9. Bugs Reporting
10. Reworking on patches.
11. Release to production.

Requirements Stage
Normally in many companies, developers itself take part in the requirements stage. Especially for product-based companies, a tester should also be involved in this stage. Since a tester thinks from the user side whereas a developer can’t. A separate panel should be formed for each module comprising a developer, a tester and a user. Panel meetings should be scheduled in order to gather everyone’s view. All the requirements should be documented properly for further use and this document is called “Software Requirements Specifications”.
Test Plan
Without a good plan, no work is a success. A successful work always contains a good plan. The testing process of software should also require good plan. Test plan document is the most important document that brings in a process – oriented approach. A test plan document should be prepared after the requirements of the project are confirmed. The test plan document must consist of the following information: • Total number of features to be tested. • Testing approaches to be followed. • The testing methodologies • Number of man-hours required. • Resources required for the whole testing process. • The testing tools that are to be used. • The test cases, etc
The software design is done in systematical manner or using the UML language. The tester can do the reviews over the design and can suggest the ideas and the modifications needed.
Code Reviews
Code reviews are similar to unit testing. Once the code is ready for release, the tester should be ready to do unit testing for the code. He must be ready with his own unit test cases. Though a developer does the unit testing, a tester must also do it. The developers may oversee some of the minute mistakes in the code, which a tester may find out.
Test Execution and Bugs Reporting
Once the unit testing is completed and the code is released to QA, the functional testing is done. A top-level testing is done at the beginning of the testing to find out the top-level failures. If any top-level failures occur, the bugs should be reported to the developer immediately to get the required workaround. The test reports should be documented properly and the bugs have to be reported to the developer after the testing is completed.
Release to Production
Once the bugs are fixed, another release is given to the QA with the modified changes. Regression testing is executed. Once the QA assures the software, the software is released to production. Before releasing to production, another round of top-level testing is done. The testing process is an iterative process. Once the bugs are fixed, the testing has to be done repeatedly. Thus the testing process is an unending process.