What is software testing – A Brief Guide

Software testing has become a very good career choice in the past few years, both in terms of professional growth and income. 

By detecting errors and mistakes that affect the quality of software, testers ensure that software products can be commercialized faster.

A well-tested software product is reliable, secure, and works well. This saves time and money and makes the product more cost-effective. 

It refines the development process and ensures a superior-quality product.

What is Software Testing?

Software testing is a process of verifying and validating whether software or an application is bug-free or not. 

For testing the software, there are different levels such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and user acceptance testing. 

What Is A Bug In Software Testing?

• A bug in software testing is a defect in a component, system, or software that can cause the component, system, or software to fail to perform its required functions.
• If a bug or defect is encountered during the test execution, it might result in component failure.

Types Of Bugs In Software Testing

• Functional errors
• Syntax errors
• Logic errors
• Calculation errors
• Unit-level bugs
• System-level integration bugs
• Out-of-bounds bugs

The Reason Why Software Testing Is Necessary

• To gain customer confidence.
• To check software adaptability.
• To identify errors.
• To avoid extra costs.
• To accelerate software development.
• To avoid risks.
• To optimize business.

Software testing is divided into two steps

Verification: “Are we building the product right?” 

Validation: “Are we building the right product?” 

Software testing has two major techniques

• Black Box testing
• White Box testing

Software testing is classified into two types: manual testing and automation testing.

A. Manual testing

In manual testing, the software is tested manually without using any scripts or tools. There are some stages to testing the software, such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and user acceptance testing. The tester uses the test cases, test plans, and test scenarios to test the software for the completeness of the testing.

Types Of Manual Testing

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

B. Automation Testing

Software engineering has advanced considerably with a multitude of technological innovations. With the introduction of various changes—product development and market integration—understanding of mobile devices and user interface channels across various platforms is becoming increasingly complex every year.

While software testing for products and applications might become unnecessarily difficult, test automation plays an important part in dealing with such challenges.

When writing automated tests for web applications, you have to deal with a number of challenges. You have to choose the right test framework, use the right selectors to avoid buggy tests, and build a good testing framework. Selenium testing helps you tackle these challenges. It provides you with the tools to overcome hurdles in software testing by developing stable and effective testing solutions.

Selenium Automation testing testers do complete automated testing, such as setting up your environment, making and running automated tests, analyzing reports, and fixing errors by using a Selenium Grid.

What is Automation Testing?

Automation testing is testing where testers can write the script and use other tools to test the software. Automation testing is used to test the application in terms of load, performance, and stress.

Automation testing uses different types of testing tools that lets you create test scripts that can be executed repeatedly and don’t require any manual intervention.

Benefits Of Software Testing

1) Cost-Effective

2) Security

3) Product quality

4) Customer Satisfaction

Different Types Of Software Testing

The following are the most common type of software used by software testers to find bugs in the system, software, etc.

• Functional Testing
• Non-Functional Testing

1 . Functional Testing

It determines whether each application feature functions by the software requirements.

• Unit Testing

Unit testing is an Important part of software development. It helps developers write better code by ensuring that each functionality works as expected.

• White Box Testing

“White box testing” is when you test an application without knowing its inner workings. It’s a great way to test new features or fix bugs before they go live.

• Gorilla Testing

The term “gorilla testing” refers to the practice of using online searches to test how well a website ranks in search results. Webmasters often use this kind of test to figure out which keywords should be used in a site’s content.

2. Integration Testing

Evaluates a system’s or component’s compliance with stated functional requirements.

• Gray Box Testing

Gray box testing is an important step in the software development process. It helps developers understand what users actually think about their products.

3. System Testing

It Analyze the system’s design and behavior, as well as the customer’s expectations 

• End To End Testing

End-to-end testing is an important part of any project that involves software development. It ensures that all the pieces fit together correctly so that when the final product launches, it works properly.

• Black Box Testing

Software testers use black-box testing to ensure that their programmes function correctly as per the requirements.They test their code by writing tests that exercise different parts of the program. These tests are called “black boxes” because they’re hidden inside the program itself.

• Smoke Testing

It determines if the current build is stable or not. User acceptance is conducted by end-users for product release.

• Sanity Testing

Sanity software testing allows developers to automate the process of writing unit and integration tests. It also allows them to write tests before they release their code to production.

• Happy Path Testing

Happy Path Testing is a free, open-source tool that allows developers to automate functional and performance testing of their web applications.

• Monkey Testing

Monkey Software Testing is an automated testing tool that helps you test web applications quickly and easily. It allows you to write tests without having to write code.

4. Acceptance Testing

Acceptance testing is an essential step in agile development. It ensures that the product meets customer requirements before it goes live.

• Alpha Testing

Alpha testing is carried out early in the development process by internal staff and is followed up with beta testing, in which a sampling of the intended audience actually tries the product. 

• Beta Testing

A beta test is the second stage of software testing in software development, during which a sample of the target market evaluates the product.

• Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT)

Operational acceptance testing (OAT) is used to assess the operational readiness (pre-release) of a system or software. OAT is a non-functional software testing method used primarily in projects for software development and software maintenance.

B. Non-Functional Testing

It ensures that there are no threats or risks in the software system or application that could cause data loss.

Following are the non-functional tests commonly used by testers

1. Performance Testing

• Load Testing
• Stress Testing
• Soak Testing
• Volume Testing
• Endurance Testing
• Scalability Testing

2. Usability Testing

• Exploratory Testing
• Cross Browser Testing
• Accessibility Testing

3. Compatibility Testing

It ensures that a software program works appropriately across a wide range of browsers, databases, operating systems, mobile devices, networks, and hardware. 

4. Security Testing

It ensures that there are no threats or risks in the software system or application that could cause data loss. 

C. Regression Testing

It is used to ensure that the code update hasn’t broken any existing features.

A career in Software Testing :

No career is good or bad. It is entirely dependent on individual interests. 

If you are from a non-IT background and want to make your career in the IT sector, then software testing is a good career choice for you.

 Manual software testing does not require excellent programming skills, but if you are going for automation testing, then you have to learn programming skills like Java.