It is important to measure the progress of QA work. QA metrics are integral to the quality assurance process. Metrics allow us to track the status of our QA activities, measure product quality, and optimize processes towards a flexible and effective process.
A metric is a number that quantifies the degree to which a certain system, system component, or process has a given attribute. The most popular example is weekly automobile mileage compared to the manufacturer's recommended mileage.
Software testing metrics are numbers that help estimate the progress, quality, productivity, and health of the software testing process. It's important to have these set up ahead of time in order to get clean data.
The ultimate goal of software testing metrics is to make the best way to measure and improve the efficiency of your software testing process. They provide reliable data about the process, which can help you make better decisions about your software testing.
Metrics importance
Metrics are essential for understanding how well software performs. By analyzing metrics, can learn patterns and bugs that occur in similar software and how often those bugs occur. Metrics also help product owners and managers understand how a team performs and to what extent they are succeeding. However, it is important to remember that metrics are only numbers without context. You will need to consider the specifications of a project, the expected delivery time, and any processes within the company to estimate performance correctly.
Metrics LifeCycle
In the life of a test metric, there are four stages:
Analysis:
In this stage, QA engineers know the metrics that are needed and how to get them.
Communication:
QA engineers have to identify important metrics and then explain them to stakeholders.
Evaluation:
In this stage, data is quantified and verified. Then, testers use the metrics to calculate the values.
Reporting:
When the evaluation process is completed, the QA team needs to create a summary of the conclusion. After its distributed among stakeholders and representatives, they'll supply feedback on the information in the report.
There are two major categories of testing metrics:
Metrics for software testing activities can be grouped into the following:
Project metrics are measurements that represent how well the projectis moving towards its exit conditions. Some examples of project metrics are how many test cases were executed, passed, or failed.
Process metrics are measuring the ability of product development or testing. These include things like the amount of defects that were uncovered by testing.
People metrics represent the skill levels and abilities of a team. For example, adherence to schedule for test case implementation is a people metric.
Every type of metric can be used by more than one category. For example, if you have a chart that records the rate at which bugs are being reported on a day-to-day basis, it can be the project, product, and process metrics.
The most useful metrics:
Defect metrics: This metric provides insight into quality aspects of software, including functionality, performance, installation, stability, usability, compatibility, and more. Defect metrics are absolutely essential in understanding what is wrong with the software.
Defects finding rate: It is used to identify the pattern of defects during a specific timeframe. For example, if the defects finding rate for the first hour is 2 percent, then 2 out of 100 products are defective.
Defect severity: A useful indicator to determine how much of an impact a defect will have on the quality of your software.
Defect cause: Understanding why the error happened helps you fix it.
Test Coverage: A measure of how many tests were completed for a given program. It helps to ensure that every inch of code is thoroughly tested, as well as catching any errors or problems in the code.
Defect fixing time: It determines the time it takes to fix a defect.
Test case efficiency: The percentage of defects found by that testcase. This statistic can tell the efficiency of a test in finding defects.
Schedule adherence: The difference between the time you planned to execute a schedule and the time that the schedule actually happened. Its primary goal is to determine the time difference between what was planned and what was actualized.
Metrics are essential to the testing process, and the testers will use them to report the progress and results of their work. In addition, the Test Manager will present these metrics at meetings attended by stakeholders from different levels of the company.
