Performing maintenance and test suites are integral to ensuring the proper performance of software and to identifying and solving any possible issues. This guide will present an introduction to performing maintenance and test suites. It will also address the common reasons why software testing suites can fail.
Introduction to Software Maintenance
Generally, developers perform software maintenance to upgrade, improve, or enhance the software or fix a problem within the software. There are four basic categories of software maintenance:
- Corrective maintenance
- Adaptive maintenance
- Perfective maintenance
- Preventative maintenance
Corrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance applies when a fault has occurred within the software system. These problems could be errors, defaults, or faults that affect software applications of any kind, such as software design and code.
In an example scenario, developers would fix a glitch in the software’s authentication system that is not allowing users to log in to a platform.
Adaptive Maintenance
Developers perform adaptive maintenance when the software needs to be modified to interface with new software or hardware or run on new platforms or new operating systems.
Adaptive maintenance often occurs due to changes to the platform in which the software operates. These changes could be reflective of new policies, laws, technology, etc. In this scenario, developers may need to perform adaptive maintenance to, for example, update the software to be compatible with the latest version of a browser.
Perfective Maintenance
Developers perform perfective maintenance when software needs to be updated to support new features or functionalities of the system. This maintenance often occurs in response to customer needs.
Developers use perfective maintenance to enhance and improve the user experience of a platform. This includes updates such as speed optimization functionality improvements, usability changes. For example, perfective maintenance could enhance user-friendliness and ease of use on a payroll platform.
Preventative Maintenance
Preventative maintenance happens periodically to ensure that the software continues to run smoothly. If a small problem occurs, preventative maintenance is performed to ensure that the problem does not develop into a serious issue. Modifications and updates are also part of this kind of maintenance to ensure continued functioning.
Test Suites
Test suites are a collection of test cases or scripts. When developers perform test suites, they can group test cases into logical, organized categories for analysis. This analysis helps ensure that the software is running correctly and in an optimized manner, especially after updates to the system.
Why Test Suites Can Fail and How to Ensure Testing Success
Developers can run into problems with test suite failures for several reasons. The main reason for test suite failure in software testing occurs when the test suite has become so large, sometimes containing hundreds or thousands of test cases or scripts, that the suite is unstable and unreliable. This can result in the test suite throwing false positives.
Another common cause of test suite failure occurs when the test suite is outdated. Test suite failure can occur if part of a developer team has moved forward with updates before the test suite is finished. This can especially happen with overly complicated, large end-to-end test suites that may unnecessarily slow down the development process.
How to Ensure Successful Testing
To ensure the success of the test suite, it’s imperative to make sure that its scale is of reasonable scope and size. Additionally, the developer team and client must all be on the same page with the timeline, scope, and testing priorities.
Conclusion
Performing the categories mentioned above of maintenance and test suites is imperative to ensure optimized functioning and performance of the software. Within a developer team setting, clear communication and expectation will help ensure that testing and updates occur within a logical progression and timeline.
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