What is Reliability testing?
Reliability Testing is an important software testing technique that is performed by the team to ensure that the software is performing and functioning consistently in each environmental condition as well as in a specified period. It ensures that product is fault free and is reliable for its intended purpose.
Reliability Testing incorporates the results from both functional and non-functional testing such as Stress testing, Security testing, Functional testing, Production testing and more.
This enables the team to determine various problems in software design and functionality.
Objectives of Reliability Testing:
The main objective of Reliability testing is to test the performance of software under a condition. Other objectives are:
- To discover the structure of repetitive breakdowns
- To find the number of failures that occur in a predetermined measure of time
- To locate the mean existence of the software
- To find the primary driver that is the cause of failure
What are the features of Reliability Testing?
- One of the features is the ability of the software to work accurately under given condition
- Reliability testing helps identify the issues and faults in a product before it is delivered to the customer
- Reliability testing ensures that it meets the Clients’ as well as Customers’ requirements.
- Reliability testing is performed at various levels of Software development, increasing the reliability and dependability of the product
- It helps uncover the issues in the software design and functionality
What are the types of Reliability Testing?
Feature Testing:
The purpose of feature testing is to check the features and functionality of the software. Following aspects are ensured in feature testing:
- Every function needs to be executed by the team
- Interaction between two or more functions is diminished
- Every function is executed completely, and team must ensure proper execution of each operation
Regression Testing:
Regression testing is done to check that no new bugs have been introduced in the application because of fixing previous bugs. This is done after every change or updating software features and functionalities.
Load Testing:
This test is concluded to confirm the functionality of the software under the conditions of highest workload. The changing point of the software is found by a step by step process until the software gets hung, broken and so on.
What are the Requirements of Reliability Testing?
As software applications are used by various industries, validating their reliability has gathered more significance. To make sure that all the results are achieved, it is important for the team to consider various requirements.
Following are the requirements:
- Test cases must cover all the necessary functionality of application and must be executed for an adequate measure of time for receiving the rough estimate of the software execution without any failure.
- Test must be executed for a longer period as spectator for environmental level of failure like memory error, database etc.
Reliability Testing Approach:
The purpose of Reliability Testing is to test the software system thoroughly to ensure that all the defects and faults in the system are identified and rectified by the team.
It is ensured with assistance of following approaches:
Test-Retest Reliability:
The team tests and retests the software through various testing techniques to validate its reliability and dependability. This is done in a short span of time. In other words, a single form of the test is administered twice on same software with reasonable time gap.
Example:
A single group of examinees will perform testing process only a few days or weeks. The time should be short enough so that the examinees’ skills in the area can be assessed. The examinee’s scores from two different administrators are estimated. This type of reliability helps to demonstrate the extent to which a test can produce stable, consistent scores across time.
Parallel forms Reliability:
In this approach, software is tested by two different groups simultaneously to check how similarly the two forms function. The team will be able to check the consistency of the results across various forms.
Example: Many exams have multiple formats of question papers. Parallel forms reliability is estimated by administering both forms of exam to same group of examinees. Scores on two forms are correlated to determine how similarly the forms function.
Decision Consistency:
The results obtained from Test-Retest Reliability and Parallel forms Reliability are evaluated finally through this approach.
Case Study:
Consider a project ABC. In this project, a form must be submitted to capture the lead. The functionality of the same form can be tested twice with reasonable time gap. This involves Test-Retest reliability.
The functionality of the same form, i.e. capturing of lead through the same form can be tested by two testing teams simultaneously. This can be used to check how similarly they function. This is called Parallel forms reliability.
Hence the team can decide or evaluate about the functionality of the form from these two approaches.
Conclusion:
Thus the importance of Reliability Testing is rapidly increasing and has become essential to perform reliability testing during SDLC. It validates the quality and functionality of the software in various scenarios and ensures its accuracy.
