What are different characteristics of installation testing?

Which software testing methodology pertains to the quality assurance work and is focussed up on what is to be done by the customers in order to set up and install the software system or application successfully on their system?

The answer is “installation testing”. 

The installation testing may involve the below mentioned testing processes:

1. Full install/ uninstall process
2. Partial install/ uninstall process
3. Upgrade install/ uninstall process

About Installation Testing

- The installation testing is carried out by the software testing engineer in collaboration with the configuration manager. 

- Running an installation program is considered to be the simplest approach to installation testing.

- This approach is some times called “package software” and it typically deploys a set up program that is nothing but a multi- configuration wrapper using which the software can be easily installed on a variety of machines as well as many operating environments. 

- All the possible configurations should be given an appropriate level of installation testing so that they can be released to the customers without any hesitation. 

- There are some cases of the distributed system in which the software is to be released particularly in to a target environment that is live such as an operational web site. 

- In such cases the installation or you can say software deployment involves changes in the database schemas and installation of the new software system or application.

- Some deployment plans are created for these kinds of circumstances. 

- These deployment plans consist of back out procedures that are aimed at rolling back the target environment if the deployment does not show up as successful. 

- The deployment plan should be tested before deploying them in an environment that is an exact copy of the live environment. 

- Synchronizing the data in the test deployment environment with minimum disruption can increase the organizational requirements of such a plan. 

- This type of implementation plan includes:

1. Up grade of a multi tier application and
2. Testing of the processes which are carried out during installation.

- Such kind of testing is often compared with the “dry run”. 

- Implementation testing is nothing but another name for installation testing. 

- A successful installation of the software system or application will surely make the customer happy but an unsuccessful installation will disappoint the customer. 

The situation can get even worse; it can badly damage the user’s system. This is an example of how a lack of proper installation testing can ruin your impression of the customer. Now you must be wondering what you should do to avoid such embarrassing situations? 

- You should test the installer thoroughly and also with the combinations of manual and automated processes on various machines with several kind of different configurations. -“Time” is the factor that limits the scope of the installation testing. 

- Executing even a single test case takes a hell lot of time. 

Steps involved in Installation Testing

Below we are mentioning the steps involved in the installation testing:

1. Decide for how many different system configurations you want to test the installation.
2. Prepare a basic hard disk drive and format it with the default file system.
3. Install a common OS like windows on this hard drive.
4. Install some primary required components on this hard drive.
5. Create images of this HDD and this will enable you to create configurations on the drive.
6. Make different sets of each configuration like OS that can be used for further software system.