(Updated  blog based on Dan Ashby’s feed back on 06/27/2018)

Test coverage is  an integral part of software testing.  It is used to determine the test effectiveness of the project delivery.

What is Test Coverage?

Test coverage is how much in-depth testing is carried out to ensure the application’s functionality by executing the test cases.

To measure what percentage of code has been exercised by a test suite, one or more coverage criteria are used. Coverage criteria are usually defined as rules or requirements, which a test suite needs to satisfy.

How Test Coverage Works?

Test coverage can be done with the various techniques:

• Specification-based test coverage
• Structure-based test coverage
• Experience-based test coverage

Specification-based test coverage can be achieved with the help of equivalence partitioning, classification tree, boundary value analysis, syntax testing, decision tables, state transition methods.

Structure-based test coverage can be achieved with the help of branch testing, statement testing etc. This will be part of mostly done in white box testing.

Experience-based test coverage can be achieved with the help of error guessing. Usually, it will be done after completion of other test coverage techniques.

How to Measure Test Coverage?

If a product or project is developed very well but if it’s not matching with the customer’s requirements then it’s of no use. Requirements coverage while testing is as important as product coverage.

Test coverage can be calculated with the below formula for requirements based test coverage,

Test Coverage = (No. of test cases executed/Total no. of requirements)  * 100%

How to Increase Test Coverage?

The testing team should be attentive to the detail and should collaborate with the stakeholders of the project such as business analysts, developers, designers. It helps to understand the requirements of the product/project better. We need to follow the below tips to improve Test Coverage:

• Build test strategy which covers the requirements and testing methods.
• Everyone in project team should be well aware of the release schedules ahead of time.
• Based on the critical workflow of the product/project, the test scenarios should be prioritised and need to be tested first.
• Keep track of the features released in the particular release and how they will impact the existing features in the application in the initial build of the release itself. It provides stability and quality of the release.
• The assignment of resources is critical and use test management tools to track the progress of testing and to confirm exit criteria of the release in turn to avoid risks.
• Prepare a checklist for all of the testing activities.
• Implement Test automation to reduce the overall testing time.
• Identify and prepare a list of risks and uncertainties of the project/application. Then based on the list do the risk mitigation steps.

To track and achieve the best test coverage, we have to use Test Management tool. With our test management tool QA Touch you can map the requirements and test cases.  The Requirement Traceability Matrix will be automatically generated for you. For more details refer to this blog.  It will ease the QA Manager/Test lead job and will give an insight of the overall project release schedule status.