QA Glossary

Acceptance Criteria are the conditions that a software product must meet to be accepted by a user, customer, or other stakeholder.

Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) is a development methodology based on communication between the business customers, the developers, and the testers.

Acceptance Testing is a level of the software testing process where a system is tested for acceptability.

Accessibility Testing is the practice of making your web and mobile apps usable to as many people as possible.

Ad Hoc Testing is an informal testing type with an aim to break the system.

Agile Testing is a software testing practice that follows the principles of agile software development.

Agile is a methodology for software development that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and customer feedback.

Alpha Testing is a type of acceptance testing; performed to identify all possible issues/bugs before releasing the product to everyday users or the public.

API Mocking is creating a mock API that simulates the behavior of a real API.

API Testing is a type of software testing that involves testing application programming interfaces directly.

Appium is an open-source tool for automating mobile applications.

Availability Testing is to ensure the application is available for use as per requirements.

A Backlog is a list of tasks or items that need to be completed in a project.

A Burndown Chart is a graphical representation of work left to do versus time.

Backend Testing is a type of testing that checks the server-side or database part of web applications.

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is an agile software development process that encourages collaboration among developers, QA, and non-technical or business participants.

Beta Testing is a type of testing where a version of the product is released to a limited audience outside of the programming team.

Big Bang Integration is an approach where all components or modules are integrated simultaneously after which everything is tested as a whole.

Black-Box Testing is a software testing method in which the internal structure/design/implementation of the item being tested is not known to the tester.

Bottom-Up Integration is an approach to integration testing where the lower-level modules are tested first.

Boundary Testing is a type of testing that focuses on the values at boundaries.

Branch Testing is a type of testing that ensures that each one of the possible branches from each decision point is executed at least once.

Code Coverage is a measure used to describe the degree to which the source code of a program is tested by a particular test suite.

Code Review is the systematic examination of computer source code.

Coded UI Testing is a type of testing where user interface functionality is tested by using scripts that simulate user interactions.

Compatibility Testing is a type of testing used to ensure that the software can run on different hardware, operating systems, applications, network environments, or mobile devices.

Compliance Testing is to ensure that the software meets the required standards and regulations.

Component Testing is testing individual components of the software.

Configuration Testing is the process of testing a system with each of the supported software and hardware configurations.

Continuous Delivery is a software development discipline where code changes are automatically prepared for a release to production.

Continuous Deployment is a strategy for software releases wherein any code commit that passes the automated testing phase is automatically released into the production environment.

Continuous Integration is a practice where developers frequently merge their code changes into a central repository, followed by automated builds and tests.

A Daily Standup is a short, daily meeting in agile practice, where team members coordinate their activities and discuss any blockers.

A Defect is an error or bug in a software application that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result.

The Definition of Done is a shared understanding of what it means for work to be complete.

Data-Driven Testing is a framework where test input and output values are read from data files.

Decision Table Testing is a technique in software testing that makes use of decision tables to test the system behavior.

Defect Density is the number of confirmed defects detected in software/component divided by the size of the software/component.

DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) aimed at shortening the development lifecycle.

A Driver is a piece of code that passes test cases to another piece of code.

Dynamic Testing is a type of software testing that involves testing the software by executing it.

An Epic is a large body of work that can be broken down into a number of smaller tasks or user stories.

End-to-End Testing is a methodology used to test whether the flow of an application from start to finish is behaving as expected.

Endurance Testing is a type of performance testing to check the system's behavior under sustained use.

Equivalence Partitioning is a testing technique that divides input data into equivalent partitions for testing.

Exploratory Testing is a type of testing where test cases are not created in advance but testers check system on the fly.

A Feature Toggle is a technique in software development that attempts to provide an alternative to maintaining multiple feature branches in source code.

Functional Testing is testing the software against its functional requirements.

Fuzz Testing is a type of testing where random data is input into a software system to find security loopholes and coding errors.

GUI Testing is the process of testing a product's graphical user interface to ensure it meets its specifications.

Hybrid Testing is a combination of different software testing techniques.

Installation Testing is the testing of the full, partial, or upgrade install/uninstall processes.

Integration Testing is a phase in software testing in which individual software modules are combined and tested as a group.

Internationalization Testing is the process of verifying the functionality of a software application for different locales and languages.

JUnit is a unit testing framework for Java programming language.

Kanban is a visual method for managing and monitoring work as it moves through a process.

Keyword-Driven Testing is a type of functional automation testing framework which uses keywords or action words.

Load Testing is a type of performance testing conducted to understand the behavior of the system under a specific expected load.

LoadRunner is a performance testing tool from Micro Focus.

Localization Testing is a part of software testing process focused on adapting a globalized application to a particular culture/locale.

A Mock Object is a simulated object that mimics the behavior of real objects in controlled ways.

Maintainability Testing determines if the software can be maintained, and modified easily.

Manual Testing is the process of manually checking software for defects.

Mobile Testing is the process of testing mobile applications for functionality, usability, and consistency.

Mutation Testing is a type of testing where the source code of a program is modified to ensure the existing test cases can detect the errors.

Negative Testing is a type of testing that validates if a system behaves as expected with invalid input.

Non-Functional Testing is testing the non-functional aspects like performance, usability, reliability, etc.

Orthogonal Array Testing is a systematic, statistical way of testing pair-wise interactions.

A Product Owner is a role in Scrum responsible for defining stories and prioritizing the team backlog to streamline the execution of program priorities.

Pair Programming is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation.

Pairwise Testing is a type of testing that is used to test all the possible discrete combinations of the parameters involved.

Penetration Testing is a type of security testing where a simulated cyber attack is performed on a computer system to evaluate its security.

Performance Testing is a testing practice performed to determine how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload.

Positive Testing is a type of testing that validates if a system behaves as expected with valid input.

Postman is a collaboration platform for API development.

Prototype Testing involves testing early versions of a product.

Quick Test Professional (QTP) is a test automation tool from Micro Focus.

A Retrospective is a meeting held at the end of a sprint in Scrum to discuss what was successful, what could be improved, and how to incorporate those improvements in the next sprint.

Recovery Testing is a type of testing that verifies a system's ability to recover from failures.

Regression Testing is a type of software testing that ensures that previously developed and tested software still performs correctly after it was changed or interfaced with other software.

Reliability Testing ensures that software can perform a failure-free operation for a specified period of time.

Risk-Based Testing is a type of software testing that prioritizes the tests of features and functions based on the risk of their failure.

A Scrum Master is a role in Scrum responsible for ensuring the team lives agile values and principles and follows the processes and practices agreed upon.

A Smoke Test is a preliminary test to reveal simple failures severe enough to reject a prospective software release.

A Spike is a user story for which the team cannot estimate the effort needed and thus must conduct time-boxed research.

A Sprint is a set period of time during which specific work has to be completed and made ready for review.

Sandwich Testing is a combination of both top-down and bottom-up integration testing approaches.

Sanity Testing is a type of testing performed after receiving a software build, with minor changes in code or functionality, to ascertain that the bugs have been fixed and no further issues are introduced due to these changes.

Scalability Testing is a type of performance testing that investigates a system's ability to scale up with increased load.

Scrum is a framework for managing work on complex products, typically used in software development.

Selenium is a portable framework for testing web applications.

Soak Testing is a type of performance testing that verifies a system's stability and performance characteristics over an extended period of time.

Stability Testing is a type of testing that checks if the software application can continuously perform well over a long period of time.

Stress Testing is a type of performance testing conducted to evaluate a system or component at or beyond the limits of its anticipated or specified workloads.

A Stub is a piece of code used to simulate the behavior of some other component.

System Integration Testing is a testing process that validates the interaction between software systems.

System Testing is a type of testing that validates the complete and fully integrated software product.

A Test Case is a set of actions executed to verify a particular feature or functionality of your software application.

Test Data is the data that is used by testers to execute the test cases.

A Test Double is a generic term for any case where you replace a production object for testing purposes.

A Test Environment is a setup of software and hardware for the testing teams to execute test cases.

A Test Harness is a collection of software and test data configured to test a program unit by running it under varying conditions and monitoring its behavior and outputs.

A Test Plan is a document detailing the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended testing activities.

A Test Script is a set of instructions that are performed on the system under test to verify that the system performs as expected.

A Testing Framework is an execution environment for automated tests.

Test Automation is the process of using software tools to run tests automatically.

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a software development process where requirements are turned into specific test cases before the software is fully developed.

TestNG is a testing framework inspired by JUnit and NUnit with added functionalities.

Top-Down Integration is an approach to integration testing where the top-level modules are tested first.

A User Story is a tool used in agile software development to capture a description of a software feature from an end-user perspective.

Usability Testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users.

Use Case Testing is a functional testing technique that helps to identify test cases that cover the entire system.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is the process of verifying that a solution works for the user.

Velocity is a measure of the amount of work a team can tackle during a single sprint.

Volume Testing is a type of software testing, where the software is subjected to a huge volume of data.

Waterfall is a sequential (non-iterative) process for software development, where progress flows in one direction like a waterfall.

White-Box Testing is a testing technique that examines the program structure and derives test data from the program logic/code.