Software Test Life Cycle (STLC)

It is a step by step procedure to test the software which consists of all the testing activities.
STLC is a part of SDLC where as Defect life cycle is a part of STLC.

Below are the phases of STLC:

1. Requirements collection.
   
2. Test Plan.
   
3. Test Cases.
   
4. Requirement Traceability Matrix(RTM).
   
5. Test Execution.
   
6. Defect Tracking.
   
7. Test Execution Report.
   
8. Retrospect Meeting.
   

Requirements collection

In this phase we collect the business need of the customer in the form of requirement document.

Test Plan

Once the requirements are given the managers and leads study the requirements and prepare the test plan.

Test Cases

Every test engineer has to follow the test plan for their further testing activities, based on assigned modules we start preparing the test cases.
To prepare test cases we do following activities:
1. First we do system study i.e, read, understand and review the requirements.
2. Prepare a high level document known as Test scenarios to understand the flow of the application.
3. Once scenarios are ready prepare a in-detail document known as test cases.
4. Once the test cases are written it should be sent for review process.
5. The reviewer cross checks if the test cases have maximum test coverage and a proper flow is maintained during this process, all the mistakes in the test cases are documented in the form of review comments and send back to the author/test engineer.
6. The author does the necessary changes i.e, fix the required review comments and sends it back once again for review.
7. This process continues until both of them accepts for the correctness of the test cases.
8. Finally lead approves the test cases which will be stored in a centralized place known as test case repository.

Requirement Traceability Matrix(RTM)

Once the test cases are completed and before doing test execution we prepare one more document known as RTM which id done to make sure that every requirement is covered in the form of test cases.

Test Execution

By this time the developers would have finished writing the code and application would be installed on to the test server, as a test engineer we start the test execution process.

Defect Tracking

During test execution we may find many bugs which needs to be send to the developer, the developer fixes it and it need to be re-tested by test engineer, this process of defect tracking continues until the software is stable or bug free or works according to the customer requirements.

Test Execution Report

In the last we prepare a test execution report which talks about the number of test cases written, executed, passed and failed which defines the stability of the application.

Retrospect Meeting

Once the entire software test life cycle is done in the end we have a meeting known as Retrospect Meeting where we discuss about pros and cons(Good and Bad) things about the current process and any improvements that need to be done for the upcoming process or releases.