Introduction

Software testing is undoubtedly an extremely important task to deploy high-performing, bug-free software. You might already have some understanding of this important process, but this blog post will help you clear out any confusion regarding the basics of software testing. Reading this blog will help you get a clear understanding of the definition, importance, benefits, and types of software testing.

Let’s begin with the definition of software testing.

Why Software Testing is Important?

The quality of the software is checked in the software testing process to fix the bugs and errors. It’s next to impossible to deploy the software without passing it through a testing process.

Software that is properly tested is considered reliable, high-performing, and secure. And not just that, you get to save your resources (time and money), get a high-quality software product, and higher customer satisfaction.

What are the benefits of Software Testing?

Let’s take a look at some of the top benefits of software testing:

Cost-Effective

Every software development company wants to cut down on costs without compromising the quality to earn more profit. Considering this, this benefit secures the top position in the list. To make it even more cost-effective, software testing must be done right from the beginning of the software development cycle.

Security

This benefit of software testing deals with the highly sensitive issue of vulnerability. It helps to effectively deal with the potential risks at an earlier stage.

Product quality

The ultimate goal of any software developer is to deploy a software product with the highest possible quality. As software testing helps to identify bugs and errors, we get high-quality software products upon fixing defects.

Customer Satisfaction

The success of a software product depends on the client’s feedback. After all, that’s what we develop a software product for. When we fix the errors and follow requirement specifications, we get a product that the client loves.

Software Testing Process

Planning

Planning is a major phase that leads to having successful software testing. All the details of the project are collected in this phase and then a list of tasks is prepared. Once you get to know what tasks to perform, the next thing is to prioritize the tasks. In this phase, you also get to divide the tasks amongst the team members.

Preparation

As the name suggests, this phase is about preparing for a project where you develop a foundation for successful testing. This phase also includes another important task that is to collect tools and techniques for a specific testing project. And not just that, make sure you get familiar with the tools and techniques in this phase. In this phase, you perform the following tasks:

• Collecting test-cases
• Researching product features
• Preparing test-cases

Execution

Now, this is the phase where the actual execution of software testing is done. Software testers execute test-cases and then gather the results to analyze the quality of software. The acquired results are then compared with the expected ones. After that, you have to identify failed and successful tests and test-cases.

Reporting

Reporting counts as the last phase in the software testing process. Here, you document all the findings from the execution phase and share them with the concerned members of the team. The report must include a detailed explanation of test-case failures, test runs, test outputs, and more. The more detailed report you produce, the better it will be for eliminating the bugs and defects.

Software Testing Strategies

There are several software testing strategies commonly used these days for finding and fixing bugs and defects in software. Depending on your software type, testing goals, and test data, you can decide which testing strategy is best for you. A good testing strategy identifies the bugs in the most effective way without missing out on any serious bugs.

Unit Testing

The programmer of the software uses this strategy to test the unit of the program. This software testing strategy is helpful in identifying the individual unit code that is not working properly.

Integration Testing

The major focus of the integration testing strategy is to look at the software construction and design. Software testers have to check what integration units are properly working or not.

System Testing

In this strategy, you compile your whole software and then test it as a whole. It mainly checks portability, security, functionality, etc.

Types of Software Testing

Each of these software test types has been further divided into different types. Let’s see what are those sub-categories of software testing types.

Functional Testing

• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• Smoke testing
• System testing
• UAT (User Acceptance Testing)
• Sanity testing
• Localization
• Interface testing
• Globalization
• Regression testing
• Interoperability

Non-Functional Testing

• Performance testing
• Stress testing
• Security testing
• Recovery testing
• Reliability testing
• Install testing
• Compatibility testing
• Usability testing
• Volume testing
• Compliance testing
• Load testing
• Localization testing

Maintenance

• Regression
• Maintenance

Summary of Software Testing Basics

In this blog post, you learned the basics of the software testing process. Here is the summary of what we discussed:

• We talked about the definition and importance of software testing followed by its benefits.
• Then we looked at how the software testing proc ess carried out in different phases.
• Finally, we discussed major three types of software testing strategies along with their subtypes.

And as always, if you want to share or ask anything, we appreciate your participation in the comments section below.