Introduction to SDET
- 1. SDET?
- 3. SDET is an IT professional who can work equally effectively in development and testing roles. Full form of SDET is Software Development Engineer in Test and he/she takes part in the complete software development process. An SDET's professional's knowledge is entirely focused on testability, robustness, and performance. They are also able to play a contributory or reviewer role in the creation of designs for production software.
- 4. History • Introduced by Microsoft • Widely popularized when Google followed suit after Microsoft • Introduced to bridge the Gap between Development (Technical) vs Product (Functional, Generally POs and the tester) • SDET are in the Techno Functional space between the product and development team, Having a good knowledge of Functionality as well as the code that drives it
- 5. SDET vs Traditional QA While the roles of SDETs may seem very similar to those of QA Automation Engineers, with even most of the tools and language expertise required being same (Selenium, Java, and Jenkins), there are certain obvious and clear differences between the two roles. An SDET, in layman terms, is a developer who instead of working in the product development team, works as part of the test team. SDETs are responsible not only for writing code but are required to test the code as well. SDETs are required to continuously write, test, and fix the code they write. Their roles and responsibilities are based on the Agile lifecycle model. SDETs usually are professionals who have very strong analytical, technical, and problem-solving skills.
- 6. When is it Beneficial over Traditional QA Essentially, the SDET is a Full stack tester. An SDET is expected to be able to find bottlenecks in the code, can be deployed to hunt issues ranging from Code Quality, Design, Scalability and NFRs and builds an overall framework (Not always technical) and executes it to discover an issue. A QE, broadens it past the conventional extension by including unit tests and parts of white box testing, thereby bringing in the best of both worlds, a flavor of Code in Unit testing and Full-blown tests of traditional QA methods
- 7. NFR (Nonfunctional Requirements) Also known as system qualities, nonfunctional requirements are just as critical as functional Epics, Capabilities, Features, and Stories. They ensure the usability and effectiveness of the entire system. Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs) define system attributes such as security, reliability, performance, maintainability, scalability, and usability. They serve as constraints or restrictions on the design of the system across the different backlogs.
- 8. Benchmarking Internal benchmarking is a comparison of a business process to a similar process inside the organization. Competitive benchmarking is a direct competitor-to- competitor comparison of a product, service, process, or method. Functional benchmarking is a comparison to similar or identical practices within the same or similar functions outside the immediate industry. Generic benchmarking broadly conceptualizes unrelated business processes or functions that can be practiced in the same or similar ways regardless of the industry. Benchmarking is a process of setting a standard for a software which can be used to relatively measure a performance for the software.
- 9. Metrics The process of benchmarking leads us with lot of standard values that can be used to measure the improvement or degradation in the system being tested. We use a lot of Performance and Time-based metrics to decide the quality and reliability of the code, These Metrics generally also give us a very clear picture of the Nonfunctional Requirements being adhered to and tested on at a system level.
- 10. Reliability Reliability means "yielding the same," in other terms, the word "reliable" means something is dependable and that it will give the same outcome every time. The same is true for Reliability testing. Reliability testing in software assures that the product is fault free and is reliable for its intended purpose. How to Inspect reliability of a system? Test Retest Reliability Parallel Action Reliability
- 11. Robustness The word robust, when used regarding a software, refers to an operating system or other program that performs well not only under ordinary conditions but also under unusual conditions that stress its designers' assumptions. Robustness is something that should be designed into software from the ground up, it is not something that can be successfully tacked on later.
- 12. Fuzz Testing to Examine Robustness Fuzz testing is a technique that deals with robustness test for any software application, which is a way to inject random, unexpected input values to the system to verify whether the application crashes or if there’s any memory leak. Sometimes the inputs reflect certain behavior that bring out some unexpected results which might divert our attention to some new aspect that may help us explore a new dimension.
- 13. Performance As a general definition, performance measures how effective is a software system with respect to time constraints and allocation of resources.
- 14. Facets of Perf Testing Load testing - checks the application's ability to perform under anticipated user loads. The objective is to identify performance bottlenecks before the software application goes live. Stress testing - involves testing an application under extreme workloads to see how it handles high traffic or data processing. The objective is to identify the breaking point of an application. Endurance testing - is done to make sure the software can handle the expected load over a long period of time. Spike testing - tests the software's reaction to sudden large spikes in the load generated by users.
- 15. Maintainability In engineering, maintainability is the ease with which a product can be maintained in order to: • correct defects or their cause, • repair or replace faulty or worn-out components without having to replace still working parts, • meet new requirements, • make future maintenance easier Maintainability involves a system of continuous improvement - learning from the past in order to improve the ability to maintain systems or improve reliability of systems based on maintenance experience.
- 16. The 4 categories of maintainability test are: • Corrective maintenance tests: The system is measured to diagnose and fix the problems as soon as it is identified. • Perfective maintenance tests: The system is measured in terms of time taken to make the effort for enhancements. • Adaptive maintenance tests: It is for adapting the changes in the environment. • Preventive maintenance tests: It is to reduce the future maintenance costs.
- 17. Scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. The main objective of this is to determine when an application starts to degrade at a maximum load and take proper steps to ensure that the developed application is scalable enough to accommodate the changes in the internal applications, software, hardware and the database changes in the future.
- 18. Usability Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object such as a tool or device. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use. The philosophy behind this is that a piece of software should be intuitive and could be easily utilized by someone new or not fully acquainted by the application
- 19. What do we bring to the Table? Understanding of the systems functionality. Good understanding of the code and implementation techniques used. Birds eye view of the system. Solid understanding of the NFRs of the system. A sound knowledge of automation techniques to assist the developer in developing reliable code. Ability to pivot from a QA to Dev in case some extra help is needed.
- 20. Questions?