What is Software Testing and Why is it important?

Software Testing: In the modern world, everything by some means is surrounded by software and computerized programs. It may be basic things like texting and using your PC to software with complex and intense processes and specific purposes and functions. Whenever we receive these services through various software we can notice that most of them carry little to no errors. That’s because before the software product has been out for public usage, they are tested. Software testing can be easily defined as the testing of the software to be able to meet up the expectations and functionality for which it was designed and created for. It can either be done manually or through automated tools to have a wide range checked out.

Let’s discuss why is software testing so important and what generally happens and how is it done.

Also Read: Major Differences between Coding and Programming

Why is software testing important?

The general purpose of software testing is to test out the product for any errors, bugs, or glitches before it is used by people to ensure quality and efficiency. People also refer to it as Black or White Box testing but in general, it can be regarded as AUT (application under test). If any errors or bugs are in fact present, they can be recognized, rectified, and tested yet again. This ensures time-saving, cost-efficiency as well as positive customer feedback.

Testing is important as even a minor glitch in the biggest of software in any field can be harmful to the market, be it financial software or software that is responsible to store or function in the means of research and development, and can cause great amounts of monetary as well as human loss. Hence, it is indeed very important to understand and rectify the errors before it proceeds to go out in the world to be used.

Advantages of Software Testing

There are a bunch of advantages that come forth with software testing and some of them are discussed below:

• Cost Effective: Any issue that surrounds the IT sector is better to be fixed earlier before it gets too late. Testing software beforehand can save you the time and money to be rectifying it when damage is done. It is easier to do it in the testing phase rather than the post-release phase as it can affect various factors such as efficiency, and customer feedback and in turn give you bad rapport between your customer and you. Hence, testing is very cost-effective.
• Privacy and security: People count on you and your work to not be breaching any of their social credits. A minor glitch or bug can cause great loss of data as well as cause hackers to find a flaw in your software and be able to breach and exploit it for their personal use. This is especially important when it comes to software regarding financial concerns related to banks or cryptocurrencies. Testing eliminates such bugs and provides you with a fully functioning as well as efficient website that does not get exploited by any means.
• Quality Check: The main purpose of any software testing is to be able to have a full circle checking and inspection that provides you with a full quality control report and ensures great service to the people.

Types of software testing

There are mainly three types of software testing, namely:

• Functional testing: Testing for localization, globalization, and interoperability between different platforms and operating systems, performance, and load on the software.
• Non-functional testing: Testing for scalability, usability, and volume.
• Maintenance: general maintenance checks to identify any error that has been caused due to uninformed sources and can cause a potential loss. To ensure a quality product every time, it is necessary to have a maintenance check frequently.

Besides the type, there are generally 3 approaches to the testing of software which include:

• Unit Testing: There are generally programmers who check if every single individual unit of the software is working fine or not.
• Integrated Testing: This is to check whether the integrated units have been harmonizing or perfectly working in sync or not
• System testing: Generally done to the whole software to check the entire software as a whole which helps in determining various factors such as compatibility, portability functionality, security, etc.

Conclusion

With this, we wrap up our article and understand how important software testing or any sort of product testing is and the quality control in order to maintain a high name in the market and to ensure the best service that you can provide to your audience and consumers. Hope this helped in understanding all the factors regarding testing an provided you with adequate knowledge.