Background on Standards

A standard is a term which means a specification which has been approved by a mandated group which is recognized internally, regionally or nationally and it is publicized. It is developed by some volunteer groups working through an official process of development dealing with review and correction (Baer, D. R., Karakoti, Clifford, Minelli, & Unger, 2018). Voting process may be involved in the development of a standard code of text which may be done in levels such as international, regional or national. For a complete standard text to be developed it may take not less or more than 3 years where the most important outcomes may be available prior final date of confirmation.

In this case, the discussion is based on the two standards relating to the testing of the development and testing standards on the software. The national standard will be Australian Standard and the international standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 for systems engineering and Software testing (Laplante, 2017).

National Standard

Standard Australia

The name of this national standard is Standard Australia is a system that deals with the standards which were founded in the year 1922. It was recognized by the government of Australia through the memorandum of understanding. It was recognized as the top non-governmental standard and development system in Australia. Standard Australia is a company on its own but it is limited by the guarantee having 73 representative group appendages that are all involved in the application and development of standards which are technical in nature and service and products that are all related (Standard, 2015). Standard Australia represents Australia in the International Organization for Standards (ISO), Pacific Area Standards Congress (PASC) and the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC).

The copyright for this standard is owned by Standard Australia and the 74 members who come from the country’s best industry, consumer, and government systems. The scope of the standard is within the counter. For this standard to be understood the key terms that should be known include Australian standards does involve itself in activities that relate to a standard that benefits the Australian government and therefore to receive free service means a free service of standards for the Australians.

Standard Australia does the following tasks; software audits and reviews, software configuration, software project management plans and software testing and engineering planning of the software testing creating relevance. This functions of Standard Australia are geared towards software testing and development.

National Standard: Standard Australia

International Standards Organization (ISO) as the name of this international standard is a non-governmental organization which is independent whose contributors and members are the organizations which are standard from close to 168 countries which have the membership to ISO. ISO is now the global biggest establisher of voluntary international facilities and standards which provides the standard of the same standard to the world trade of the member nations. Many standards have been generated and set including the technological standards, manufacturing standards for the products, and health care and food security among others which may amount up to twenty thousand (Su, Dhanorkar, & Linderman, 2015).

This standard generated by the ISO help in coming up and generation of services and products which are safe, good quality, and reliable. It promotes businesses in increasing of the outcomes in terms of productivity as reductions of waste and errors is reduced. The ISON standards enable companies to enter into the new market over the world and the creation of a fair world trade which is achieved by directly comparing various products which are from different markets. Moreover, the ISO standards also ensure the safety of the end-users and the consumers of the products by only allowing the safe products into the market which meets the standards of the world market (Su et al 2015).

International Standards Organization (ISO) together with IEC and IEEE 29119 are groups of five standards which are internationally used for testing of the software which makes up the key terms. It was released in the year 2013 as it was developed in the year 2007 as the first development. This standard explains the vocabulary and terms, techniques, documentation, processes and process judgment framework for the examination that will be used in various processes of software lifecycle development which makes it relevant to software testing.

The International Standards Organization (ISO) standard hold it copyright in that for every publication produced by ISO that a client requests from them. If the client downloads, buys, copy or any other acquisition means the client has agreed and acknowledged to abide by the copyright that is in the acquired document. It further holds that any kind of material acquired from the ISO may not be reproduced, lent, leased, sent or involved in any kind of exploitation (Scott, 2015).

The scope of the ISO standards is based on the member countries which has joined it this includes the 168 member states. ISO is specifically relevant to software testing in that the internationally agreed software standards are used in the organizations or the software development life cycle. This gives an organization the best quality technique of testing a software that is recognized worldwide. The ISO standards are in five categories according to what they do, that is, definitions and concepts, test processes, documentation test, test technique and keyword driven testing all for software testing process (Thelen, Vanstapel, Kroupis, Vukasovic, Boursier, Barrett, & Sprongl, 2015).

International Standard: ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119

Looking into the two standards, both of which are non-governmental organizations, voluntary and they offer services which are similar. They standardize products and services.

The difference is that ISO is a worldwide standard having a good number of members as a country state while Standard Australia is just operating within Australia (Helfand, 2018).

1. Spiral Test and XQual

Special features of Spiral Test

The spiral test is a Test Management Software that gives a full solution on Quality Assurance which manages the evaluations, requirements, and errors including the issues in a single platform having full management from beginning to the end (StClair & StClair, 2015).

The Requirements Management in the Spiral helps the users and evaluators of the software to know the number of the requirements that have been successfully tested (Unterkalmsteiner, Gorschek, Feldt & Klotins, (2015). This spiral test enables the software developers to intensely examine each and every available requirement to know the number of the issues that have promoted the validity of the practicality and every state of the mistakes examined. Spiral Test gives to ways on the requirement management that is, Release management and document collaboration.

Spiral Test avails a web platform which enables the software developers to securely upload documents in a centralized place that has proper directory management and document taxonomies with an inbuilt version having the multiple tags. These platforms make it possible to give a full picture of the software to the user by using the Spiral Test analysis such as the requirements, happenings and the cases of the tests.

Those versions of the software that undergoes testing are managed and enabled by the Spiral test. A given release is associated with an incident and the Test Runs as the execution cycle takes place. Moreover, drill down abilities are given by every release to show the related errors with the performed test runs.

Apart from the document testing provided by the Spiral test it also provides a list of testing such as automated, manual, and Exploratory Testing

Testing through a manual process

This is the easiest method of software testing by Spiral Test with capabilities to evaluates groups of cases which enables the software developer to check a step if it has passed or failed a test process as it voluntarily takes note of the bugs. This testing is capable of keeping full track through checking the records of the bugs and the involved necessities cited from Hishioka et al (2015).

Comparison of the Two Standards

Automatic Testing

Automatic testing in Spiral Test can be achieved through an automated method by use of RemoteLaunch where the developer can manage the testing automatically. The test cases can be analyzed in the master roll of the hosts that operate automatically waiting for the execution which can be done by a remote or a local computer.

Committed mode of exploratory test that makes it possible for the developer to produce and edit as the testing process takes place. This also comes with functionalities of checking the incidences between the system testers and software developers.

Spiral Test provides a fully equipped bug tracking software that completely manages the total process of software testing. This features of bug tracking include the smooth reporting, priorities, entire status that can be edited, a boost for customizable fields and workflows and types of the bugs.

In the ensuring of that the software system can work well with the business processes configuration and the customization of the Spiral Test are important and not including the coding. Software tester can create email templates which are customized and can configure customized workflow which is used in managing the process of testing.

For the build states to be recorded in this test and the links to incidents and test runs to be created, the capability to incorporate with the continuous corporation servers. This will enable trackability for every build to know what underwent the test and that which was fixed Isenkul, Sakar & Kursun (2014, May).

To ascertain that the users receive notifications on the updates about the system and enables the users to present incidents and comment on the same from a powerful system provided by the Spiral Test.

The spiral test as a testing tool for software projects and systems it enables reporting and project management.

Spiral Test allows recording of defects, printing of codes on a piece of paper and backward capture, moreover, it includes a wide dictionary of reports that are printable with the charts. These reports can undergo the customization process in formats that are supported.

The strength and the health of a project can be viewed on a single page such as the dashboard. The dashboard, especially on the homepage, may give a summary of the information about the given project as per Verzuh  (2015).

XQual which is also known as XStudio is a testing management tool which can be possible scaled and is a flexible software application Life-cycle management tool which directs a full process of the software testing that is from the beginning to the end cited from Anttila (2018). The list of the process involved are releases of the versions of products, specifications, tests, requirements, defects, test reports, and campaigns.

Spiral Test and Different Methods of Testing

Trees are used to represent plans test plans, all the models of the data, main entities which includes the specifications, requirements, defects, tests, and campaigns. The test management system is connected to the test using a simple API provided by the XQual allowing the user to create the connection. According to the XQual technologies, this connector is called the launcher. This launcher makes the link in between the software developer tests and the XQual tools.

The XQual test management tool performs the following tests for the software back box, integration, smoke, unit, positive, white box, stress and load among other tests. These tests are made possible with the ability of XQual that it is fully developed using java especially for the GUI, the data stores which are in MySQL and the standard orientation.

XQaul is able to manage all the entities present in the testing process which includes the tests, users, defects, agent, SUT, and specifications among others as stated by  Freire (2015).

Both the software testing tools have the user interface that a tester can interact freely with the entities (Tabo et al, 2017). This provides traceability of the reports in terms of knowing the progress of the test.

The two test management tools are able to support modular tests and are reusable. Spiral Test and XQual create scenarios to the users allowing the similar tests utilities to be reused multiple times. These abilities help in reduction of time and cost of test management making them more productive.

Spiral Test and XQual test management tools are able to incorporate and integrate with CI and automation tools which automates the processes and makes them run the tests on regularly.

Conclusion

Software development and testing standards together test management tool both work together in ensuring that a right and acceptable software are created. Standard will ensure that the software can be used by any groups of states depending on the type of the standard a state has employed while test management tools will take part in the actual test of the software from the beginning to the end.

Reference

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