Various organizations and groups worldwide build up and set different standards for improving the excellence and user experience of their software. In this chapter, you will be learning about the widely implemented standards used in software development for increasing the Quality Assurance (QA) and testing of a product.
The International Software Testing Standard
ISO/IEC/IEEE having number 29119 is intended for software testing acts as an internationally approved collection of standards in software testing followed for any SDLC model in developing software for any organization. When you implement the standards, you adopt the internationally-recognized and approved testing standards that will eventually offer your organization a quality approach for testing. Currently, five standards are there within this international software testing standard. These are:
- ISO/IEC 29119-1: Deals with concepts and definitions of software (published: Sept '13).
- ISO/IEC 29119-2: Deals with test processes in a product (published: Sept '13).
- ISO/IEC 29119-3: Deals with test documentation of the product (published: Sept '13).
- ISO/IEC 29119-4: Deals with testing techniques and strategies (published: 2014).
- ISO/IEC 29119-5: Deals with keyword-based software testing (published: 2015).
The Popular ISO/IEC 9126
This is a popular software testing standard that deals with the below-mentioned characteristics for determining the product quality in the testing phase:
- Modelling Quality
- Inner metrics
- External metrics
- Quality in the usage of metrics
Some precise set of quality features need to be followed for all products while standards are being set. These features are set so that they meet all the boundary requirements of software and test cases. These are as follows:
- Proper functionality of the software
- User's reliability of software
- Usability of software (high tuned user experience)
- High efficiency
- Proper maintainability
- All aspects of portability
Miscellaneous Software Testing Standards
These are some other useful standards a software tester must know related to QA and software testing. These are:
| Standard | Description |
|---|---|
| IEEE 829 | This standard is used for proper document formatting and is practiced in different stages of software testing. |
| IEEE 1061 | It has the technique to establish better quality and validating the software with quality metrics. |
| IEEE 1059 | Supports in guiding software verification and validation. |
| IEEE 1008 | Standard which supports proper unit testing. |
| IEEE 1012 | Standard that supports Verification and Validation of product. |
| IEEE 1028 | Standard that guides in proper software inspections. |
| IEEE 1044 | Standard, which categorizes the various anomalies in software. |
| IEEE 830 | Standard that helps following the proper development of a system with accurate requirements specifications. |
| IEEE 730 | Standard that deals with the product's quality assurance. |
| IEEE 1061 | Standard that deals with the product's quality metrics. |
| IEEE 12207 | Standard that guides in proper life cycle processes of both data and software. |