Everything You Need to Know ABout Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)

• QA
• November 13, 2025

by Bhumi Goklani

Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) is an important part of a successful quality assurance process. It defines a structured path to ensure every piece of software is validated before it reaches your users.

As software ecosystems grow more complex and release cycles get shorter, software testing and quality assurance services should not be an afterthought. Businesses need a repeatable, measurable, and scalable process to maintain software quality without slowing delivery. That’s exactly what STLC enables.

In this blog, we’ll explore what the software testing life cycle is, break down its phases, highlight its benefits, and explain how STLC is different from SDLC.

Key Takeaways

• The Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) ensures defects are detected early, helping maintain consistency and quality across every release.
• Don’t confuse STLC with SDLC because SDLC governs the entire software delivery journey, and STLC focuses exclusively on achieving testing excellence within it.
• Automation plays a pivotal role in STLC by accelerating feedback loops, improving accuracy, and reducing manual testing overhead.
• A well-defined testing lifecycle with clear deliverables, documented test cases, and standardized environments fosters seamless collaboration between QA and development teams.

What is the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)?

Call it the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) or QA lifecycle; it offers a systematic and strategic process to plan, design, and execute test cases to deliver the best quality software.

It consists of a series of phases, each with specific goals, that are performed sequentially to identify and resolve software defects. It aims to ensure the final product meets all functional and non-functional requirements.

Also Read: Full-Cycle Software Quality Engineering: What’s Included In This QA Services?

What are the Phases of the STLC?

The software testing life cycle consists of 6 key stages, including requirement analysis, test planning, test case development, test environment setup, test execution, and test cycle closure. Each of these phases serves a specific purpose to help you launch defect-free software.

Let’s understand the different phases of the software testing lifecycle:

Phase 1: Requirement Analysis

At this phase, software quality testers are needed to focus on understanding the functional and non-functional requirements of your software. They do this by analyzing the requirement documentation, interacting with stakeholders, and identifying testable requirements.

As an output, they deliver the Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM).

Phase 2: Test Planning

After getting insights from the requirements and scope finalized at the software discovery phase, the QA engineer would then create a comprehensive test plan. It includes the scope of testing, objectives, testing types, resources required, test environment setup, and entry/exit criteria for each phase. They also estimate effort, cost, and dependencies.

By the end of this phase, you would have test plan documentation and effort & schedule estimations. It helps to define the “how,” “who,” and “when” of the entire testing process.

Phase 3: Test Case Development

Here, QA teams design detailed test cases and scripts that outline step-by-step actions, input data, and expected results. This step involves identifying test scenarios, writing step-by-step test cases, preparing test data, and defining expected results. If needed, QA engineers also develop automated test scripts along with it.

As a deliverable, you can expect to get approved test cases, test data sets, and automated scripts.

Phase 4: Test Environment Setup

In this phase, QA engineers set up the necessary hardware, software, and network configurations for software testing. This setup ensures the testing environment matches the production environment. During this phase, the QA team performs smoke tests. These tests verify that the environment is ready for test execution.

You can also integrate CI/CD pipelines with the test environment, if needed. As a result, your deliverables include an environment setup checklist and a readiness report.

Phase 5: Test Execution

In the prepared test environment, the QA team executes the designed test cases. Post execution, they check the results of executed test cases with expected results to log defects, fix them, and retest bug fixes until the expected outcomes are achieved.

In the deliverables list of this phase, you can expect to receive the test execution report, defect logs, and pass/fail metrics.

Phase 6: Test Cycle Closure

Once all tests are completed, teams evaluate the process, review test coverage and defect reports, document best practices and improvement areas, and share the closure summary with stakeholders.

As a key deliverable in this phase, you can expect to receive a test closure report, a QA summary, and a process improvement plan.

Key Benefits of Following the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)

A well-defined software testing life cycle (STLC) helps identify defects early on, save costs, enforce accountability, mitigate risks early on, speed up release cycles, and more.

Let’s have a look at the key benefits of STLC:

• Involves QA from the very start (during requirement analysis) to identify issues before they become costly production defects.
• Building on this early involvement, each STLC phase defines specific roles, deliverables, and exit criteria, which eliminates guesswork and improves collaboration between development and QA teams.
• STLC promotes a traceable, phase-wise process that ensures that all functional and non-functional requirements are tested thoroughly.
• Because the STLC mandates validation at every stage, software undergoes continuous checks, helping to ensure more stable releases and higher-quality products.
• It standardizes and automates testing activities where required, helping identify risks early.
• It makes the QA team define measurable QA metrics and clear documentation, which enables decision-makers to gain visibility into project health and quality benchmarks.
• It promotes the culture of continuous improvement, refining testing maturity over time, and drives operational excellence across future projects.

STLC vs. SDLC: What’s the Difference?

Many confuse the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) with the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). But in reality, both STLC and SDLC serve different purposes in the software journey.

SDLC covers the entire software development process, covering requirement gathering, architecture design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance. On the other hand, STLC is a subset of SDLC that focuses purely on testing activities.

SDLC is the broader framework that guides teams to build a functional product. STLC, on the contrary, ensures that every component, integration, and feature of software aligns with quality standards before the launch.

Let’s understand the difference between SDLC and STLC through a quick comparison table:

How MindInventory Can Help to Implement STLC In Your Project

Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) is a discipline that defines how your software product solution performs, scales, and earns trust. It fosters a collaborative environment, aligning product owners, engineers, and designers to work in harmony towards a common goal of delivering high-quality, functional, and user-friendly software applications.

Ultimately, a well-implemented STLC leads to increased customer satisfaction, reduced maintenance costs, and a stronger reputation for delivering reliable and robust software products.

Hence, at MindInventory, we involve quality engineering in every phase of your SDLC, from requirement gathering to development and even after that.

Hire our QA experts who follow a structured STLC approach, from test strategy design to automation and continuous validation, ensuring your releases are faster, smoother, and risk-free.

Whether you’re modernizing an existing system or building a new product from scratch, we bring a blend of manual and automated testing frameworks tailored to your tech stack and business goals.

FAQs About STLC