Reliability Testing
What is reliability testing?
Reliability testing is a software testing process that checks whether the software can perform a failure-free operation in a particular environment for a specified time. Reliability testing ensures the software product is bug-free and reliable enough for its expected purpose.
Reliability Test Planning
Generally, the following aspects are relevant when planning reliability tests:
You can monitor reliability after the software has entered production. The organization and staff responsible for the software’s operation must be consulted when gathering reliability requirements for test planning.
The Technical Test Analyst may select a reliability growth model that shows the expected reliability levels over time. A reliability growth model can provide valuable information to the Test Manager by comparing the expected and achieved reliability levels.
Reliability tests should be conducted in a production-like environment. The environment should remain stable to enable reliability trends to be monitored over time. Because reliability tests require the use of the entire system, reliability testing is most commonly done as part of system testing. Individual components can be subjected to reliability testing and integrated sets of components. Detailed architecture, design, and code reviews can remove some of the risks of reliability issues in the system.
Reliability tests usually require long execution times to produce statistically significant test results.
Reliability Test Specification
Reliability testing may take the form of a repeated set of predetermined tests. These may be tests selected randomly from a pool or test cases generated by a statistical model using random or pseudo-random methods. Tests may also be based on patterns of use, sometimes referred to as “Operational Profiles.”
Specific reliability tests may specify that memory-intensive actions are to be executed repeatedly so they can detect possible memory leaks.
Types of reliability testing
Featured Testing checks the feature provided by the software, and it’s conducted in the following steps:
- Each operation in the software is executed at least once.
- Interaction between the two operations is reduced.
- Each operation has to be checked for its proper execution.
Load Testing is conducted to check the performance of the software under the maximum workload.
Regression testing is mainly used to check whether any new bugs have been introduced because of fixing previous bugs. Regression Testing is conducted after every change or update of the software features and their functionalities.
