What is the software testing

Software testing is a process, to evaluate the functionality of a software application with an intent to find whether the developed software met the specified requirements or not and to identify the defects to ensure that the product is defect-free in order to produce a quality product.

Software Testing is not important only for the software company, it is also important for the customer. Many of the customers nowadays are concerned about how the software companies are ensuring their software quality, what is the process to do that and so on.

why Software Testing is important:

• The testing is verifying that the required functionality is working correctly and validating that every function meets the requirements and we delivered it to the customer as per the specifications. (Doing it right and deliver the right Things)
• It is important to make sure that the system does not do anything that it is not supposed to do.
• Effective testing will dramatically decrease the cost of the software.
• Continuous learning for the team, the team will learn from defects, when the team discovers a defect in function or requirements even, they learn how to avoid that in the future. This will increase team maturity as well.
• It can decrease the system failures, there are known disasters that have been reported due to insufficient testing.
• Quality products and software will ensure a sustainable company reputation or it can turn it into an untrustworthy company.

Here are the benefits of using software testing:

• Cost-Effective: It is one of the important advantages of software testing. Testing any IT project on time helps you to save your money for the long term. In case if the bugs caught in the earlier stage of software testing, it costs less to fix.
• Security: It is the most vulnerable and sensitive benefit of software testing. People are looking for trusted products. It helps in removing risks and problems earlier.
• Product quality: It is an essential requirement of any software product. Testing ensures a quality product is delivered to customers.
• Customer Satisfaction: The main aim of any product is to give satisfaction to its customers. UI/UX Testing ensures the best user experience.

Any software should have its testing cycle mapped to the main development lifecycle activities. every testing cycle has some common activities, which are:

• Requirements testing: mainly how to ensure that each requirement is testable.
• Test planning: It is about how to plan the testing activities, estimate the effort, the required team, ..etc.
• Writing Test Cases: In this activity, the testers start to write the testing scenarios and scripts, these scenarios should include unit, integration, system testing, ..etc.
• Test execution: It is mainly about preparing the testing environment and starting testing execution
• Testing feedback: after the execution, the testing results and defects report should be reported to the development team to start fixing them.
• Defect Retesting: when the developer report that the defect has been fixed, it should be tested again by the testing team.
• User Acceptance Test: this should be the validation activity with the end-users who will use the system to ensure that they are working correctly from the business perspective. This can be iterative as well after the customer reports some defects as well.
• Testing Closure: It is important to know when we should stop testing, explore the testing findings, and learn from the cycle for the new testing cycles.

There are three types of software testing approaches.

White Box Testing:

It is also called Glass Box, Clear Box, Structural Testing. White Box Testing is based on the application’s internal code structure. In white-box testing, an internal perspective of the system, as well as programming skills, are used to design test cases. This testing is usually done at the unit level.

Black Box Testing:

It is also called Behavioral/Specification-Based/Input-Output Testing. Black Box Testing is a software testing method in which testers evaluate the functionality of the software under test without looking at the internal code structure.

Grey Box Testing:

The grey box is the combination of both White Box and Black Box Testing. The tester who works on this type of testing needs to have access to design documents. This helps to create better test cases in this process.

The following types of testing can be executed from Blackbox and Whitebox approaches:

• Unit Testing: 
• User interface testing
• Integration Testing: 
• System Testing (End to End Testing):
• Acceptance Testing: 
• Performance Testing
• Regression Testing
• Usability Testing
• Security Testing

In the current digital age and the competitive software industry, it became essential to deliver not only the intended functionalities of the system but to ensure its scalability, agility, and modifiability. In order to reach this competitiveness in the market and to have qualified products, you need an efficient quality process of the software.