Test design and Test execution

(Q). What are the activities performed in test design and test execution?

Test Design:

The test case development activity is started once the test planning activity is finished.Based on the requirement analysis, test conditions are written first and an approval is obtained from the QA lead.

This is the phase of STLC where testing team write down the detailed test cases. Once the test cases are ready then these test cases are reviewed by peer members or QA lead. Once the preparation of Test Case Development and Test Environment setup is completed then test execution phase can be kicked off.

Test Execution:

In this phase, testing team start executing test cases based on prepared test planning & prepared test cases in the prior step.

Once the test case is passed then same can be marked as Passed. If any test case is failed then corresponding defect can be reported to developer team via bug tracking system & bug can be linked for corresponding test case for further analysis. Ideally every failed test case should be associated with at least single bug.

Once the bug fixed by development team then same test case can be executed based on your testing planning.

End to End Testing

(Q). What is End to End Testing?

End to End testing is a technique to check whether the behavior of the application flow right from start to finish meets the expectation. It is designed based on the end user’s scenarios to validate the application and the integration of its components. E2E Testing also helps you prevent the risk of whole system collapse due to subsystem failures. The purpose of performing end-to-end testing is to identify system dependencies and to ensure that the data integrity is maintained between various system components and systems.

Why End to End Testing?

Modern software systems are complex and are interconnected with multiple sub-systems.

A sub-system may be different from the current system or may be owned by another organization.  If anyone of the sub-systems fails, the whole software system could collapse. This is a major risk and can be avoided by End-to-End testing. End-to-End testing verifies the complete system flow. It helps detect issues with sub-systems and increases confidence in the overall software product.

System Integration Testing

(Q). What is System Integration Testing?
System Integration Testing is defined as a type of software testing carried out in an integrated hardware and software environment to verify the behavior of the complete system. It is testing conducted on a complete, integrated system to evaluate the system's compliance with its specified requirement.

System Integration Testing (SIT) is the overall testing of the whole system which is composed of many sub-systems. The main objective of SIT is to ensure that all software module dependencies are functioning properly and the data integrity is preserved between distinct modules of the whole system.

Example of Software testing and Software integration testing:

A car manufacturer does not produce the car as a whole car. Each component of the car is manufactured separately, like seats, steering, mirror, break, cable, engine, car frame, wheels etc. 

After manufacturing each item, it is tested independently whether it is working the way it is supposed to work and that is called Unit testing.

Now, when each part is assembled with another part, that assembled combination is checked if assembling has not produced any side effect to the functionality of each component and whether both components are working together as expected and that is called integration testing.

Once all the parts are assembled and the car is ready, it is not ready actually. The whole car needs to be checked for different aspects as per the requirements defined like if car can be driven smoothly, breaks, gears, and other functionality working properly, car does not show any sign of tiredness after being driven for 2500 miles continuously, color of car is generally accepted and liked, car can be driven on any kind of roads like smooth and rough, sloppy and straight, etc and this whole effort of testing is called System Testing and it has nothing to do with integration testing.