Understanding the Significance of Software Testing
Software testing is a process of evaluating and verifying that a software product or application is reliable, secure and user-friendly for consumption. Software testing encompasses various techniques and methodologies preventing bugs and improving performance. This process ensures the product/software behaves correctly as developed by developers.
Key Role of Software Developers & Testers in Software Testing
Developers and testers are the primary stakeholders of software testing. Developers build the software, but they regularly perform tests whenever they build a feature. Testing by developers also includes debugging, verifying the new code’s performance, checking the application’s resources and checking the compatibility with other software.
The tester’s role is to be an expert in all aspects related to the product and a tester works closely with the developer to understand the product. In the testing process, testers execute the software components to evaluate the software application’s functionality, performance, accuracy, efficiency and usability.
Testing is a crucial aspect of software development as software or applications with bugs may cause significant delays in project timelines resulting in poor user experience leading to harming business reputation and revenue.
Types of Software Testing
In software testing, there are two steps involved, and they are verification and validation. Verification testing will determine whether the product complies with its specifications and requirements while validation testing gauges the users’ needs and business requirements.
There are two predominant types of Software Testing, and they are Manual and Automated.
Manual Testing: This testing is carried out by an individual or group of individuals. They manually operate the software and verify whether the software is behaving as expected. Manual testing involves a human tester who practically interacts with the software to catch the bug.
The cons of manual testing are, it requires a human’s physical presence, an environment to carry out the process and prone to human errors such as typos.
Automated Testing: This Software testing process is carried out by tools to automatically run the test cases. Automated testing leads to greater efficiencies. Automated testing finds defects more accurately than human testers and it can make the results available to everyone involved in the software testing process.
The drawback of Automated Testing is, if the test script isn’t well written, the quality of the testing process drops.
Fundamental Levels of Software Testing
There are several fundamental levels of testing within software testing, and each carries a specific objective. They include:
- Unit Testing
It is the foundational level of Software Testing, yet it is the lowest level in testing methods. In this, each and every component of the software will undergo testing to ensure it is fit to be used by the developers.
- Integration Testing
This testing level follows Unit Testing, and it will determine whether the individual units or components integrate and tested to ensure they work together. The main purpose of this testing is to identify issues related to integration of individual units or components of the software. Also, it focuses on the architectural structure of the application and is considered to be the comprehensive testing compared to Unit Testing.
- Functional Testing
Focusing on the business requirements, Functional Testing verifies whether all the functionalities of the application are working effectively. However Functional Testing only verifies the output of an action and would be concerned with getting a pre-defined value from the database.
- Performance Testing
This testing aims to find out how the software application works under different workloads. Thus, testing on the performance of the whole software application. Also referred to as non-functional testing, it measures the scalability, stability and reliability of the application. Performance Testing can be classified into several types including load testing, stress testing, endurance testing, volume testing and scalability testing.
- Regression Testing
This testing is done to ensure any changes in the code do not adversely affect the application’s existing functionality. When a bug is spotted, it is inevitable to make changes in the code resulting in feature updates or other improvements.
- Security Testing
This Software Testing focuses on the application’s robustness and secure configuration. This test validates that your software application is not open to hackers or other vulnerabilities that exploit leading denying access to services and cause them to perform incorrectly.
- Usability Testing
Usability testing encompasses functional elements like navigation and data input work seamlessly. This testing also focuses on the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) that will validate how well a user can use the application.
- Acceptance Testing
This is a technique for verifying whether the software meets the end-user requirements and is ready for release. During this testing phase, the entire software keeps running and focuses on replicating the user behavior. It is the most critical phase of software development as the feedback from this testing may lead to changes or enhancements in the software.
- Exploratory Testing
This is a testing exercise where testers explore the application without predefined test cases. It covers non-functional issues like performance and reliability concerns.
While comprehensively testing an application or software, a combination of techniques and tools are used as part of a strategy. The strategy is one of the considerations to test a piece of software and there are multiple software testing strategies.
Software Testing Strategies
- Static Testing: The strategy here is to catch the bug or defect as early as possible and it involves two techniques – Review and Static Analysis. Review aims to detect and remove errors while Static Analysis looks for structural defects in the code written by developers.
- Structural Testing: Also called White-Box Testing, they are performed on individual components after the code is written for the same component. Structural Testing requires thorough understanding of the code written and the tester needs to be knowledgeable about the programming languages.
- Behavioral Testing: Also called Black-Box Testing, this is the opposite of Structural Testing. The strategy of this testing is to evaluate the software from a user’s perspective. In the sense it evaluates the functionality of the software without considering the internal code structure.
Best Practices of Software Testing
Software Testing follows a common process like defining the test environment, developing test cases, writing script, analyzing test results and submitting the defect reports. Here are some best practices of Software Testing.
What are the testing standards and criteria that are needed? What do we achieve with each testing process? How do you document and record the result of each test?, are some of the questions that would determine the best practices of software testing.
Continuous Testing:
Continuous Testing is a process of incorporating automated feedback at different stages of the software or the application development. Continuous testing enables software to be validated in realistic environments which improves design and reduces risks.
This type of Software Testing works by using automated tools that load predefined scripts at all stages of production. These automated scripts eliminate the need for human intervention.
Configuration Management:
Businesses should track what software is in the shaping and enable teams to have access to assets including code, design document, test scripts and test results.
Bug Tracking:
Bugs can hold any project causing severe delays. Regularly monitoring and tracking the bugs is important for both development and testing teams. Automated tools can be used to track bugs and their impact on the software or application.
Post-deployment Testing:
This is an on-going process, and, in this practice, a tester will retest features, gather feedback and monitor the application to make sure it operates as designed. During post-deployment, new features can be added to keep the application afresh.
Document the testing:
Documentation provides transparency in all the testing processes, and this is essentially a long-term intended goal which allows product owners and business developers to evaluate, understand the testing specifications, and reuse successful testing practices.
Benefits of Software Testing
Cost savings: Software with too many bugs will have devastating consequences. Users will abandon the software while developers and testers need to put in extra effort to resolve it. This results in additional investment. If the software undergoes testing and comes out with no bugs, it will save huge costs for the business.
Product Quality: Software testing helps in identifying the bugs and they can be resolved ensuring high quality software is deployed to the end-users. Producing a high-quality product reduces the risk of service issues and.
Stronger security: Software with strong security will have longevity and will have a positive effect on customer experience. However, software with vulnerabilities will be least preferred by customers resulting in waste of time and investment.
Conclusion:
In the development lifecycle, Software Testing forms a critical aspect for applications to perform as expected and meet the users’ needs. Software testing helps in identifying the gaps and errors which are the requirements of the users. Ensuring all the functionalities are incorporated before deployment will make customers confident of the business.
