A well-designed and well-tested web site will attract and retain users. However this can be its downfall: while good web developers consider optimizing their sites for speed to be part of their job, responsibility for other vital non-functional requirements such as reliability, availability, scalability and security is much less clearly defined; and the environment in which developers carry out their unit and page-level testing is usually far from realistic.
These non-functional issues are dependent on far more than the design and implementation of the site. Code, image and media files, infrastructure equipment, interfaces, support and management of the site must all deliver and therefore must all be tested. However the processes of specifying planning and performing this testing are very different to those for functional testing, to the extent that at times it becomes questionable whether the required activity is 'testing' in the usual sense at all. It is a central objective of this course to identify, define and promote the involvement in and contribution to non-functional quality activities by testers using the analytical and methodical skills they already possess.
In this course the most important non-functional attributes are identified and described in detail, so that delegates can make a realistic assessment of the risks to their own projects. A formal procedure for planning, creating and documenting suitable testing is described, and practical, realistic and applicable methods of carrying out testing of all the non-functional attributes are explained. This explanation includes a discussion of available automated tools where appropriate, including frank assessments of their benefits and limitations. However the methods are explained from first principles, largely without the use of tools, to form a sound understanding on which to base decisions involving tools later.
Objectives:
It is intended that after attending delegates will
- understand a general approach to specifying and testing non-functional requirements of a web site
- be able to plan non-functional testing based on assessment of risk
- be able to create test documentation appropriate for web non-functional testing
- be aware of the key non-functional issues and available methods for testing them
Intended for
Anyone who is or will be involved in testing web applications. A basic knowledge of web technologies and infrastructure is assumed but experience of testing is not essential
Key points
- Formal definition and assessment of risk associated with failure in the five most important non-functional attributes: availability, reliability, performance, security and scalability and the most common mechanisms by which these failures occur
- Formulating appropriate and effective non-functional requirement specifications
and test documentation
- The fundamental non-functional tests which should be carried out regularly throughout the development lifecycle
- Creating and managing effective, realistic and affordable web non-functional testing environments
- A formal technique for prioritizing web non-functional testing
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