POWERFUL INSIGHTS ON SOFTWARE TESTING

What do we understand by the term ‘Software’? Well, it could be summarized as many things like – A collection of instructions that tell a computer how to work or a cluster of programs working together to build and perform something complex. It certainly feels like magic as to how such brilliant things come together with just strings of 0 and 1’s.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE (SDLC)–

Software Development is certainly a mean feat and takes up an entire village to conceive an idea, develop a plan, analyze business, draw requirements, design product, develop it, test it to ensure if it is fit enough to be rolled out into the market and most importantly to analyze its usability for the intended purpose and the target audience.

Now, this entire process from ideating it to the release of product is called as – ‘Software Development Lifecycle’ or (SDLC). And it can be segregated into 7 different phases-

• Planning

• Analysis

• Design

• Development

• Testing

• Implementation

• Maintenance

SOFTWARE TESTING –

Software Testing can be called as the backbone of SDLC. It enables organizations to reach pinnacle of success by ensuring great software development. Quality Assurance step of this entire cycle has the power to transform an organization from good to best.

What is it that Software Testing does to ensure a supreme product?

• SUPERIOR QUALITY PRODUCT – Software Testing allows the organizations to have confidence in their product and ensure delivering a superior quality product to the client, which not only guarantees the best user experience but also makes the client happy.

• LOW MAINTENANCE LIFECYCLE COSTS – Delivering a thoroughly tested product means very less chances of encountering bugs in Production and later in Maintenance stage which not only is cost-effective and keeps the budgeting issues on the bay but also ensures that not much human effort is to be dedicated in the Post Production stages of a project.

• INCREASED PROFITABILITY – The quality of a product determines how usable and efficient it is. When the product is tested thoroughly, not only it increases the confidence of the client, excellent user experience but also means that we are able to meet the budget and time deadlines that were agreed on. Very few or no bugs in production means no extra costs are incurred which of course saves lot of money thus making the account profitable and in budget.

• EARLY ERROR PREVENTION – Finding bugs early in the SDLC focusing on the product testing, understanding the requirements, basing our test scenarios accurately on those requirements, touching base on corner cases, using the testing experience to the fullest, exploring the product, implementing automation wherever required helps with early error detection and prevention in later stages where it might be more costly and time consuming.

WHAT FUTURE LOOKS LIKE ?

Quality Assurance or Software Testing is in itself such a vast universe with world delving deeply into technology with each passing day and on the path of futurism.

Each day we come across new technologies, applications being built, products being launched which are holding us like glue.

But if we talk about one thing that that is a constant in all of this is – ‘Testing’ because that is the only means by which are ensuring the quality and rolling out excellence in terms of the product in market. Now to keep updated with technology and to be able to accommodate every type of testing required for this A-Z of products, there are several approaches that we can include in terms of how we go about making  a product/software/application very effective –

• Accessibility Testing

• Blockchain Testing

• Iot Testing

• API Testing

• Salesforce Testing

• Regression Testing

• Security Testing

• Penetration (Pen) Testing

• Exploratory Testing

• Microservices Testing

AUTOMATION vs MANUAL?

There has always been a sort of – ‘Tug of War’ situation between what is better – Manual Testing or Automation Testing?

Though there has never really been a clear winner out of the two, but it would be safe to say that they have to – ‘CO-EXIST’. Because, neither it is possible to automate everything under the sun because it lacks the human expertise and quickly moving on in case of a failed script unlike the automated scripts which can get stuck at some point in case of a little test case / scenario/ test data variation and require manual effort again to fix it.

Nor, it is possible to just rely upon Manual Testing because the speed with which we are advancing towards futurism in sense on technology or anything else, it is not humanly possible to achieve the superior product/application/software quality by just being ignorant of the importance of Automation. Like for instance take Mobile Testing of an application. The different Android, IOS versions, browsers, devices, brands that need to be used to ensure the quality is just so vast that we have to be heavily dependent on Automation and rely on it.

Hence, there are situations which might need Automation, but a vast chunk of things still require Manual intervention.

IS CLOUD THE FUTURE?

Cloud Culture has become such a rage in such a small duration of time that it has started to feel unreal that there existed a world without Cloud not too long ago.

It has come to a point where world can be divided into –

• PRE CLOUD Era

• POST CLOUD Era

Cloud has been of prime importance particularly for smaller scale organizations that of course require world class software or services but do not have funds for having it built in-house. For example – It is becoming increasingly popular for small scale organizations to have their mail servers on Google by using their platform as a service.

With options like –

• SaaS (Software as a Service)

• PaaS (Platform as a Service)

• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

With Cloud gaining momentum, so has the opportunities to develop and test web applications on cloud environment imitating the real world environment. Disaster Recovery Testing plays a major role here as with Cloud, we are talking about really massive data, so we have to be careful about the recovery scenarios implementation.

ARE WE DOING ENOUGH?

With Agile, Scrum foraying into the world so powerfully, we have to keep up with the pace of things. Hence, it gets very crucial from Testing perspective that we ask ourselves – Are we doing enough? In terms of Test Strategies, Test Scenarios, Cases etc. Are we ensuring a 100% test coverage, how are we being all inclusive to ensure the smooth, defect free rollout of a product.

CONCLUSION –

Quality Assurance will always be a field so diverse with so much learning and areas to pick from. It not only requires staying up to date with market trends but also requires continuous learning and growth.