What is Software Testing?

Testing a software product is one of the most important stages in the development process. Ignorance of basic terms and concepts can complicate the work of a tester. We decided to collect the most common software testing questions to help those who are just starting their career or just interested in the IT field. Some of them relate to testing theory, others to practice and others to documentation in testing.

There is a major discrepancy between how software development should be done and how it is actually done. Ideally: well-articulated requirements, complete and detailed specifications, intelligently thought-out design, and careful implementation of the software theoretically create the preconditions for an error-free, usable software product. But this is far from reality. Usually, most of the effort to create reliable software falls on the testing phase, where more or less successful attempts are made to obtain a new software product that correctly processes fairly simple input data. We recommend you this software testing services.

In different sources, say, in books articles, you can find a large number of definitions of the concept of “testing”. Various experts tried to explain it as accurately as possible, coming up with more and more new formulations. For example, one of the simplest: testing is the comparison of the actual result with the expected one. And yet – one of the quality control techniques, including work planning (Test Management), test design (Test Design), test execution (Test Execution) and analysis of the results (Test Analysis). This is the study of the program in order to find errors, a possible way to evaluate software quality in terms of defects found, tests executed and systems tested, etc.

The main method of detecting bugs in software is testing it. Testing efficiency is the most important factor determining the cost and duration of development of large software products with a given quality. The cost of testing to detect errors in software reaches 30-40% of the total cost of its development and largely determines its quality.

Software is evaluated in accordance with the international standard ISO 9126. The software will be of high quality if its functionality, reliability, usability, maintainability, performance and portability can be ensured. The more quality attributes that can be implemented or supported (for performance, these are compliance with standards, time and resource efficiency, etc.), the higher the quality of the software will be. Attributes also have numerical indicators – metrics that allow you to measure progress in achieving quality.

In general, testing has a philosophy that is based on the fact that in any program, by definition, there are errors, and it is impossible to find them all. And if for some reason, you did not find an error, it means that you simply searched badly. A successful test for a tester is one in which a bug is found. And if everything works fine, then the test is unsuccessful and does not fulfil its task. 

Errors occur not only when coding but also when designing a system and even at the stage of developing a technical task. Therefore, they test the code not only at the very end of the work but at different stages.

Testing is a fascinating and multifaceted profession. It suits diligent and responsible people, those who like to look for solutions to complex problems. 

Beginning QA engineers have a growth perspective: you can build a career from junior to senior become a team leader. You can choose a specialization to your liking and later retrain as a developer, project manager, business analyst. 

A modern tester must know a lot and be able to become a sought-after specialist. He needs to master the types and methods of testing, learn programming languages, and be able to fill out the documentation correctly. You can learn more about it here – Savarian.tech.

Creating bug-free software is hard work. Therefore, it is always wise to insist on allocating the necessary time to ensure the proper quality of software testing. Violation of this condition leads to incomplete testing and, as a result, to an unreliable software product, while compliance with it gives good results.