Editing Software testing (section)

==== Sample process ====

The sample below is common for waterfall development. The same activities are commonly found in other development models, but might be described differently.

* [[Requirements analysis]]: testing should begin in the requirements phase of the [[software development life cycle]]. During the design phase, testers work to determine what aspects of a design are testable and with what parameters those tests work.
* Test planning: [[test strategy]], [[test plan]], [[testbed]] creation. Since many activities will be carried out during testing, a plan is needed.
* Test development: test procedures, [[Scenario test|test scenarios]], [[test case]]s, test datasets, test scripts to use in testing software.
* Test execution: testers execute the software based on the plans and test documents then report any errors found to the development team. This part could be complex when running tests with a lack of programming knowledge.
* Test reporting: once testing is completed, testers generate metrics and make final reports on their [[test effort]] and whether or not the software tested is ready for release.
* Test result analysis: or ''defect analysis'', is done by the development team usually along with the client, in order to decide what defects should be assigned, fixed, rejected (i.e. found software working properly) or deferred to be dealt with later.
* Defect retesting: once a defect has been dealt with by the development team, it is retested by the testing team.
* [[Regression testing]]: it is common to have a small test program built of a subset of tests, for each integration of new, modified, or fixed software, in order to ensure that the latest delivery has not ruined anything and that the software product as a whole is still working correctly.
* Test closure: once the test meets the exit criteria, the activities such as capturing the key outputs, lessons learned, results, logs, documents related to the project are archived and used as a reference for future projects.