How To Write An Effective Test Report For Software Testing?

The software development life cycle of any type of software solution consists of four main stages that entail the process of converting the idea of a software solution into a functional software system. Basically, these stages are:

• planning or discovery stage—communication with the client to find out the difficulties of the business and what requirements the company needs to consider in building a software solution and its functionality;
• design of the solution—this stage is also important as it ensures the solution will be easy to use for users, and it will have intuitive and modern design elements;
• development—this stage entails writing code by frontend and backend developers;
• testing and deployment—quality assurance specialists hold different manual and automated tests to reveal the system bugs before its launch integration into business processes. 

In this article, we would take a closer look at the testing development stage as it is often underestimated, but it still remains pivotal for the correct software work after deployment. 

Why is the testing development stage essential?

As we mentioned above, the testing stage is the latest development step before the software product launch. It helps to determine the correctness of the software system and reveal all errors that developers could miss during the development stage. Testing is a complicated stage of software development consisting of four main steps to reveal the imperfections of the ready system. These steps are:

• unit testing—this one implies testing each function of the system separately;
• integration testing—this one is used to check the correct integration and interaction of system functions;
• system testing—this one test the ready software solution to define the general system errors if there are any;
• acceptance testing—this is the last testing step, that double-checks the correctness of the previous testing reports. 

The counted testing steps are supposed to be testing approaches, and this list includes the basic testing kinds. Due to the writing service Trust my Paper, the choice of testing methods for your solution will entirely depend on the specifics of your software product, delays, and also available budget. 

Effective testing report writing

Quality assurance engineers are tasked with defining the problems of the solution, but not always can resolve all of them. The errors of low level can be resolved with the QA team, but if there are complex issues, then the solution has to be sent to recheck by the development team. 

Surely, additional hours of developers required additional expenses from the client budget. So according to custom writing service Best Essays Education, testers need to write easy-to-read and accurate testing reports that will explain to the client and the development team the reasons for their errors and the potential ways of resolving them. 

So, further, we would like to discuss the vital components that each testing report has to include to be effective for the team and understandable for a client.

• Test Objective

The engineers who will read the testing report need to precisely understand the intention of this report, meaning why QA specialists decided these issues are vital to consider and fix before the software product launch and also which efforts are needed to execute these system changes. 

• Covered options

Each report is responsible for a certain testing step that we mentioned in the previous point. So the report needs to contain which option or area of the product was tested, why exactly this part was tested, and how exactly it was tested (range of tests). 

• Not covered options

If the QA team hasn't the opportunity to test the entire system according to the main testing steps, it has to be obviously included in the report to make the development team and a client aware of what changes are expected and what options are to test later. Also, QA engineers need to type the reasons why some parts of the software system were not tested and what they required to execute these tests. 

• The used approaches in the testing process

Testing includes different methods and techniques, some of which we mentioned above in this article. Each testing report has to contain information about the methods that were used for this particular case and what results the team got.

• System error information

All issues found during each testing stage need to be included in the summary report to revise them once again in case of need for the team or a client as well. It helps keep up to date on both sides about the changes in the system and assess the upcoming additional expenses. 

• The tools used for testing

Along with testing techniques, there are various tools and platforms QA engineers use during testing, and each of these tools has to be listed in the summary testing report to evaluate their efficiency for this development stage. 

• The summing up 

This part of the testing report has to be maximum clear for a client. If the previous information can contain some facts and terms that are unknown to the client, then this part of the report is directly for them. Overall, QA engineers need to simply explain what issues were found, what solutions they have already done, and what changes a client needs to approve and continue their fixing. 

To conclude

Generally, there are numerous templates and examples of what the clear and correct testing report should look like and what information obviously includes. The selection of testing technique, tools, and platforms is very individual and completely depends on the type of solution that was developed, its complexity and range of functions, and also on the timeline as not all clients want to wait for fixes and are willing to launch the product right away. 

QA engineers are tasked with explaining the importance of making system changes before launch with their testing reporting. That is why the summary report has to be very informative but also written in two languages—for developers as well as a client who needs to see the data in a simple language. 

Bio

Lillie Jenkins is a creative copywriter and content writer. She has worked as a copywriter since school, so her writing skills are well-honed. She writes publications in such fields as marketing, business, education, and personal life. More than writing Lillie loves to travel and read professional literature.