Tech companies take great pride in the Quality of their software. Software Quality is often used to advertise about the software product and gain a wider client base. Now, how do companies achieve this high level of software quality? The general understanding is that companies hire software developers i.e. people who write code and build software. It is, thus unsurprising that they also hire Software Testers. These testers are trained in testing a software from various angles in order to improve Software Quality. In fact, companies are also known to hire a specially trained group of people known as ‘Quality Assurance Engineers’ whose job is to maintain excellent Software Quality before each software release.
One obvious reason which makes software testing so important is that it ensures a bug and defect-free software. It is the responsibility of Software Test Engineers to test programs so thoroughly that not a single bug/defect/failure is left unfixed. A list of such mighty defects goes back to the poor software developer who must fix all of them in order to ensure good quality software release. Good quality product will in turn ensure low maintenance costs along with accurate and reliable results at the client end.
Another reason for the importance of testing is to guarantee effective performance of the software. This means performance in terms of memory, time, speed and efficiency. No one wants to buy software that eats up the computer memory or takes hours to execute! Thus, testers also test the system for performance and efficiency apart from bugs. Test Engineers also test systems for adequate security. We don’t want to risk user/client data leaks and virus/hacker attacks. They might have to investigate cyber security, possible phishing attacks, malware threats, encryption/decryption and efficient data storage.
Testers can test a system in multiple ways. They can perform a ‘manual test’ in which they act as end users and try and break the system. They usually have a list of test scenarios and test cases to execute manually. They must be adept at using the system and try various scenarios in order to identify bugs. Such testers need not have any coding or debugging skills since they simply use the software system and report bugs.
Another form of testing is the ‘automation testing’ wherein, testers must have software development skills. This is the testing in which Testers must write code that will in turn test the system. This type of testing is used where there are numerous test scenarios and cases i.e. there are too many ways in which the system could break and doing a manual test would be too time consuming. Here, the code that the Tester writes will essentially test the system with no intervention from the Tester once the automation test begins to run. Most companies use a combination of manual and automated tests to test their systems. Typically, performance testing is done via automation where perhaps, thousands of input values are bombarded into the software to test how well it performs under high stress.
In conclusion, testing is an indispensable part of programming and software. Even small programs can be tested simply by trying out various input values and checking for the expected output via manual testing. So next time you write any program or piece of code, make sure you test it for bugs and defects. In this way, you can gradually become a Tester too!
By Priya T.