Friday at 4 pm
A technician finishes the new file storage. It looks fine. She thinks: "Let us switch it on for everyone now. It is Friday and we can fix any problems on Monday."
On Monday, 800 users cannot sign in. Nobody tested it with more than ten people.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Quality assurance | checking that a solution meets the agreed standard before people use it |
| Functional testing | checking that the solution does what was agreed |
| Deliverable | something the project promised to produce |
| Performance testing | checking how well it works under load, such as speed with many users |
| Sandbox | a safe copy of the system where tests cannot harm the live one |
| Authorisation | permission to go ahead, given by the right person |
| Sign-off | a named person saying in writing that the solution is ready |
| Production | the live system that people really use |
| Staged release | putting a change live for a few users first, then more |
| Rollback | going back to the old version if the change goes wrong |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can describe testing and quality assurance, pre-production and deployment, and plan a staged release.
Starter
Have a go
Starter
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Stage 3: testing and quality assurance
Testing and quality assurance make sure the solution is good enough.
Functional testing checks the solution does what was agreed. Can a teacher save a file? Can a student open it? These agreed outcomes are the deliverables.
Performance testing checks how it copes under load. How fast is it with 800 users at once?
Two kinds of testing
| Kind | Question | Example test |
|---|---|---|
| Functional | Does it do what was agreed? | A teacher saves a file and a student opens it |
| Performance | Does it cope with the load? | 800 users sign in within one minute |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Check
Have a go
Check
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.