Almost all IT Industries adopt testing strategies and validating the software to assess its quality. Software Test Management can be understood as a method which organize, monitor and manage the processes and data needed to perform testing. Many times it has been observed that the end users who utilize software come across several types of flaws in functionality. So it is better to adopt sophisticated testing measures at each phase of software development, to achieve the desired improvement in software quality.

Standard professional practices for managing software testing involve following test management activities such as:

Organization:

This step organizes and maintains the data which needs to be tested, along with the other necessary things required to conduct the software testing like test scripts, test software and hardware. It enables project teams to track dependencies and build relationships among the various test assets.

Test Planning:

This is the second step of test management, which constitute a series of tasks that deals with the basic questions like why, what, where, and when to test. Here the test data are broken down into various test cases for a software project. Where to test is resolved by determining the required software and hardware configurations. When to test is answered by associating the cycles to the testing.

Test Authoring:

In this step, an elaborate plan describing how the software will be tested is developed. This plan consists of a series of well-defined steps which has to be implemented to accomplish a given test. Here abstract test cases are developed which is further refined to form manual or automated test scripts

Test Execution:

Once the test scripts are formed, test execution can begin. This step comprises of performing the tests by combining the series of test scripts into a comprehensive suite of tests. Test data are then tested against the suite of test scripts at different iterations.

Report Generation:

This step analyses the various results obtained as a result of software testing. After analysis, these test results are put together in the form of reports to determine the present status of project testing, and the degree of quality of the software achieved as a result of this testing procedure. The software that generates reports should be capable of generating reports in a wide range of format that makes it flexible for a variety of systems.

According to experts at ExpertAsignmentHelp one of the fundamental objectives of performing software testing is to assess and measure the quality of the software, but what means should one employ to measure quality? Though various methods exist to measure the quality of the software, but all of them varies with the type of software / application. Quality metrics must be a perfect solution to capture and store the test results to obtain completeness and accuracy. From the information obtained as a result of testing, metrics can be developed that clearly determines, measures, and track quality objectives for the software project.

Effective management of software testing involves storing the output of software testing in one centralized place like a common repository or database would ensure that their analysis and use become easier and quicker. This also saves one from the issues resulting from different versions of test results, i.e, test results with outdated information. Software test management must coordinate the testing effort of all project team members as one collective unit. For software projects that are not just limited to one site or team requires proper site organization and efficient team coordination. It will be beneficial for team members (testing team and development teams) to view the efficiency of testing, overall progress, and make decisions on the basis of the efforts put to perform testing. Software testing produces “defects” which are used as a source for developing quality metrics. More effective testing will yield more effective quality metrics.

Let us see some other factors in software test management

Along with software and hardware test cases and resources, according to information security assignment help  experts. The testing team has to be efficiently managed and coordinated. Management of software testing also needs controlling of user security and permissions for testing members. While all the phases of the software development life cycle have a linking to testing, there are some of the phases that are highly critical to software testing, these are

• Requirements management
• Change management and
• Configuration management

All the tasks involved in performing and managing software testing take up a lot of time. It is better to use automated tools or partially automated tools that help to accomplish the job in less time. Though common tools like word processors and excel offers greater flexibility, specialized automation tools for testing brings more focus and time-saving advantages. To enhance software quality of their software projects, one should use advance test management practices in place of old-custom, traditional and document-based processes. To overcome these problems it is advisable to begin test activities early and imperatively to focus laid on achieving objectives and the desired output. Encouraging the reuse of test cases, supplying remote testing resources, incorporating a flexible testing process, and automation tools will all help an IT Industry to overcome acute resource constraints.