What is Software Testing?

Software Testing:

Welcome you to another new post of manual testing tutorial series. In this post, we are going to learn What is software testing? Before sharing the knowledge about software testing, let me ask you a straightforward question: Do you know what software testing is, or have you any prior knowledge of software testing?

if you don’t have any knowledge of software testing, then there is no need to worry because in this post we are going to share software testing in details and also we are going to discuss:

• What is Software Testing?
• What is the definition of software testing?
• Why is Software Testing Important?
• Why do we need Testing?
• Principles of Software Testing
• What are the different types of software testing?
• Various methods are available in software testing
• what are the different approaches in software testing
• Software Testing Life Cycle

Lets Start discusses each of the above things one by one and tries to understand them easily with some real-time examples.

What is Software?

Let me explain to you first about what is software? So the software is nothing but is setup instructions, data, or programs that are used to operate a computer and execute specific tasks. We know that hardware representing the physical aspects of a computer in the same manner software is a generic term that uses refund applications, scripts, and programs that run a device.

What is Software Testing?

Software testing is a process that is carried in every organization to find out whether the functionality of the developed software application is beating the specification criteria or Not. This software testing process helps in finding the bugs or defects of an application verifying the current behaviour with the expected behaviour.

During the software testing process, if the behaviour of the product is not as per the expected behaviour, then the QA tester, who is responsible for testing this application, will raise a bug. In this way, the QA tester ensures that the developed product does not have any bugs, and we will deliver a quality product.

Definition of Software Testing

As we have discussed the Software testing is a process of verifying and validating the developed application that is bug-free, meets, or satisfies the user requirement, which is describing during the development and design stage.

Here, the aims of software testing are not only to find the application’s defects but also to find the gaps so that we can improve efficiency, accuracy, and usability.

As per the ANSI/IEEE, 1059 standard definition Software Testing Means “The definition of testing according to the ANSI/IEEE 1059 standard is that testing is the process of analyzing a software item to detect the differences between existing and required conditions (that is defects/errors/bugs) and to evaluate the features of the software item.”

Why do we need Software Testing?

I think software testing is playing an essential role in finding out the defect or bugs of an application before delivering the product to the client.

Which also guarantees the quality of the developed software product. Because of the testing, the software is more reliable and easy to use. If the software product is thoroughly tested, it will ensure the safe and high performance of the software application.

There are many other factors which we have discussed below like:

• Cost-Effective: Testing any software application on time can save lots of time and money. Because if you don’t test the application at an early stage and you test your application later, at that time, if you found many bugs. Then it will cost more and also impact the delivery of your product because it will require more time to fix those bugs as its impact may be other modules of your application.
• Security: It is one of the most sensitive parts of the testing of any software application. Because every user tries to use a trusted application and on which they can rely on that. So by software testing, we can able to find the risks and problems on that application.
• Product Quality: Whatever the Software application we are developing, that should be work as planned. For this, we need to follow the product requirements because by observing that, we can get the required results.
• Customer Satisfaction: The Main goal of any organization or product owner is to give the best to their customer, satisfying the application. So for achieving this, the software needs to be tested so that we can bring the best user experience to the consumers.

Software Testing Principles

During testing of software applications the QA Testers need to follow some principles because that play a significant role for a software tester while testing the product and that is:

• Software testing can help in detecting bugs: Once the Application is developed, it is recommended to test the application. Because there are chances of getting the defects which may not be identified by the developers. So the testers are created the Test cases for the application with the various scenario and try to find out as many defects in the application.
• Early testing: The earlier you start the testing for an application or project, you will find the defects in the earlier stages only by which you can fix those effects with less effort.
• Error-free or Bug-free software is a myth: Just by testing an application by the testers and if they didn’t find any defects on the application, it does not imply that your software is ready for shipping.

We have written about a detailed post about the Software Testers Principles of Testing, you can follow the link for that article.

Software Testing Types

There is various type of testing present to verify that your product is working expected or not. but all those testing are categorized into main types:

• Manual Testing
• Automation Testing

Manual Testing: Some persons do manual testing calls to the manual tester or QA tester. This is called doing the open software product by clicking through the application or interacting with the software with the help of some appropriate tools.

Sometimes, this process is a little bit expensive because it requires someone to set up an environment first. After that, you have to execute your application on that environment to verify the functionality of the software product.

In this process, there are some percentage chances of the error is the tester during the testing of the application make some typo errors or maybe skip some steps.

Automation Testing: During this type of testing, the testers test the application with the help of some automation tools to find the defects in the application. In this process, testers write the automation script and try to execute them; after the execution, the Automation tools generate the reports.

There are so many tools are available in the market which is used for the testing purpose, but some of the popular automation testing tools are QTP/UFT and Selenium WebDriver.

Testing Methods

During testing any application, we came across two different testing methods, that is:

• Static Testing
• Dynamic Testing

Static Testing:  In software testing, static testing is one of the testing techniques where the testing is carried out without executing the code. Such type of testing is coming under verification. In static testing, we are checking the files and documents like test cases, software requirement specification (SRS), test plan, and other various testing artifacts.

So we are verifying all these testing documents to ensure that we’re building the correct software product as per the specification document. There are three Different testing techniques that are followable to check the document completeness and correctness. those techniques are

• Walkthrough: which means checking a document by reading from the first page to the last page
• Inspection: In this technique, we are checking a document by searching for some specific factors
• Peer review: In this technique, we are verifying the document by comparing two similar documents.

These three document testing techniques are called as static testing techniques or review techniques.

Note: Verification means Are we building the product, right?

Dynamic Testing: Like static testing, dynamic testing is also one type of software testing technique. Here testing is carried out by executing the code. This type of testing is coming under validation. In this process, we are validating the software product is to meet the client requirements.

Note: Validation means Are we building the right product?

Testing Approaches

Different types of software testing approaches are present. Still, the main goal of all software testing approaches is to ensure that the final software product meets the requested criteria, and the software product is free from bugs.

best open this the software testing approach is categorized into three different types:

• White Box Testing
• Black Box Testing
• Grey Box Testing

Black Box Testing: In black-box testing, the QA tester giving some input to the software product and looks for the specified outputs. The idea behind the name is that the content of the code Under test is unknown to the test case, and, by definition, the QA tester is the only one concerned with the functional verification.

This black box testing also has some other names that are Behavioral/Specification-Based/Input-Output Testing. In this type of testing the tester test the functionality of the application without looking at the internal code structure.

White Box Testing: In white-box testing, the tester is knowing precisely what is going on with the code under the test, and tests are executed primarily to verify the robot of the code rather than its absolute functionality.

This white box testing is carried out at the beginning stage of the development process by doing unit tests and the early part of the integration phase.

There are different synonymous are available of this testing that is Glass Box, Clear Box, Structural Testing. This testing is conducted based on the internal application code. For this testing, the resource has a good knowledge of Programming skills. This type of testing is carried at the unit level.

Grey Box Testing: This grey box testing is a combination of both white box testing. This type of testing is conducted when the software product is moving towards the end of the integration phase and the beginning of usability.

Different Testing Levels

Before deliver or release a software product, it undergoes a thorough testing process to ensure that the final software product is working as expected. So to ensure that hit module or the software product is working as expected, the software application passes through 4 stages after testing that are:

• Unit Testing
• Integration Testing
• System Testing
• Acceptance Testing

Unit Testing: This type of testing is carried out to check whether the code of the individual module is working correctly or not. Developers mainly do this testing while developing that application. So this is also called as Module Testing or Component Testing.

Integration Testing: In this testing, we combine different modules as a single unit and test the application connectivity and data transfer between different modules. Integration Testing is again divided into different types that Top-Down Approach, Bottom-Up Approach, and Sandwich Approach.

System Testing (End to End testing): This testing is one of the black box testing techniques. Here we are testing the complete application form end to end to ensure that the application is working correctly after integrated all the modules.

Acceptance Testing: In this testing, we obtain the customer sign-off so that software can be delivered and payments received. There are few acceptance testing types there are like are Alpha, Beta & Gamma Testing.

Types of Balck Box Testing

As we mentioned above, that in black-box testing, the user test the functionality of the application. According to that we have two types of Balck Box Testing, That is:

• Functionality Testing
• Non-functionality Testing

Functionality Testing: In this type, we are verifying the functionality of the application that the software application is behaving, as mentioned in the requirement documents or not. We are testing the feature by giving the appropriate input to verify that it gives us the expected or not. Here the testers no need to worry about the source code of the application.

Non-functional testing: Here we are not testing application functionality. We are testing other aspects like performance, load, stress, scalability, security, compatibility, etc. Here the main focus is to find out how we can improve the user experience and how fast the system responds to a request.

Testing Artifacts

Testing artifacts Arun an integral part of software testing. This testing artifacts is prepared during the process of software testing. And finally, digit testing attributes are said with the clients, stakeholders, team manager, team lead, and also with team members.

Before delivering the Software or project, it goes with many stages or cycles that are called SDLC. So during each phase, we are getting some deliverables. Some of the testing deliverables are:

• Test plan
• Traceability matrix
• Test case
• Test script
• Test suite
• Test data
• Test harness

When we Stop Testing?

When someone asks you when you stop testing, it’s tough to answer this. Because no one knows when errors are not occurring. because one can never be sure when an error or a fault will occur in software. But some standards help us in determining the testing closer. That is:

• Sufficient pass percentage: It depends on the stakeholder, but the testing can be stopped when the test case pass percentage is reached to a certain level.
• After a successful test case execution: After a complete cycle of test cases executed after the last known bug fix.
• On meeting deadline: If the deadline for the projects is meet and there are no high priority bugs are there.

Software Testing Companies

Nowadays, there are so many big MNC companies that are providing software testing services to two other Core software developing companies. thought about some of the big companies who are on the list of offering this type of assistance is:

• Capgemini
• Wipro
• Cognizant
• Infosys
• TCS
• HCL and Many more

Software Testing Interview Questions

We can understand that most of the QA tester is looking for software testing interview questions. Keeping on the mind, you have collected from various online resources and also from the inspectors who have to attend multiple positions in software testing companies. You can follow those questions by using our software testing interview question link.

Conclusion:

I hope that after going through this post, you have to get in little idea about software testing. This is an oval post about software testing, but if you want to learn more about software testing, then you can follow our manual testing series where try to cover all the concept of a manual testing or software testing.