Twenty ways to ensure complete coverage of software testing

To ensure complete coverage of software testing, testing team must be careful about certain activities that are part of the process. If the software testing is not complete as per the business and customer requirements, it could have a severe adverse effect during or post implementation of the software at the customer site. The more is the coverage, the less are the chances of any bugs passing to the implementation phase. So, to ensure the complete coverage of software product and to find the maximum possible bugs or defects, testers have to ensure following steps:
1. Ensure that the documents defining the business and customer requirements are complete and correct. How to do that can be taken up in a separate topic.
2. Ensure that the development team has clearly understood the documents.
3. Ensure that testers themselves have thoroughly read and understood the documents.
4. Prepare a clear cut scope of testing based on product documents.
5. The strategy and Test Planning is as per system requirements.
6. Decide test methodology and test tools (if any), and test schedule.
7. Prepare Test Cases based on business rules and customer requirements.
8. Ensure that the test cases are extensive and sensible to cover the complete requirements testing.
9. Ensure that during testing no changes in the test environment (coding etc.) is done by development team.
10. Ensure that development team representatives (1 or all) are present during the complete testing.
11. Create Test Scenarios based on test cases.
12. Observe the result of each test case and record it accordingly.
13. Prepare a comprehensive and detailed test report explaining each of the test case, scenario and its result elaborately.
14. Ensure that all bugs reported should make sense (no duplication/overlapping of scenarios and no repetition of bugs reported)
15. Ensure that the complete testing finishes as per schedule.
16. The final report submitted should clearly state the areas not covered under testing, reason for the same and its impact on the product.
17. Simulate any bugs that are not clear to development team.
18. Ensure that you have a tentative plan from the development team when they are fixing all bugs and submitting it back to testing team.
19. Verify all bugs fixed and ensure that the development team is sitting with testers during verification.
20. Prepare the final report and submit back to Development team, giving the status of each bug fixed, as verified as fixed or not fixed. Report any new bugs arrived in the software while fixing these bugs.