Preparing test data and managing test artifacts

In software testing, verifying test scenarios with valid or invalid parameters, and different sets of input values is crucial to make sure that it behaves as per the designed test. In order to validate end-to-end scenarios and happy path workflows, we need to create test data. However, sometimes, it's a requirement of the test to bring the system to the initial level from where testing can begin. All these things can be done as a part of the test data preparation phase.

Depending on system requirements, testers can create different sets of authorized and unauthorized users with different roles, such as admin, or customer support executive, all of whom have different sets of permissions to access the application. Creating a concurrent set of users to access the application is also part of test data preparation.

Testers may also have to use different types of files, such as .doc, .docx, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .xlsx, .csv, .png, or .jpeg to import the data in order to make sure that it works, or doesn't work as defined in the test case. In these files, they can add valid or invalid users, leave some fields blank, or add unacceptable values that will break the application or throw an error.

Testers also use these files as an input for their automated test scripts, which, in turn, do the job of test validation by inserting test data read from these input files.