Software Testing Briefly Re-visited...

This post at the Software Quality Geeks is 3rd?of a series of how to be Software Quality Professional. This post will talk about the basics of?software testing. This is one of the core areas of Software Quality and also stands for one of the major responsibility of the Software Quality Professionals as we discussed in the “Does Your Organization Have A Well Defined Software Quality Process?”

Software Testing

Software Testing can be very simply defined as “the process of executing/running the software application in order to find visible and/or hidden defects (non-conformance to requirements)”. The defects are not only non-conformance to requirement this can be unusual behavior of controls of the application which is not usually and explicitly elaborated by clients.

“Good testers are masters at noticing ‘something funny’ and acting on it.”??-Brian Marick

Practical implication of the Brian Marick can be felt when you trying to scroll down from the keyboard on Microsoft Word file and MS Word does not allow you to scroll down via keyboard navigation keys and suddenly moves up where you have dragged the scroll bar from.

Software Testing can be performed in either of the following two ways depending upon the Software Development Life Cycle chosen for the software being developed.

Conventional:?In conventional ways testing is started after the coding is finished.

Unconventional:?In unconventional ways testing is ongoing process and started from the initial phase. This is widely accepted as compared to conventional testing because it helps identifying defects as early as possible.

In order to achieve a great level of confidence on the software application great effort required to put on the application. But this is not the case in today’s world of software development. Effective and efficient use of software testing can help achieve a required confidence. In order to achieve a greater confidence on software application any organization can use mixed combination of testing techniques provided by?Black-Box?testing and?White-Box?testing.

Black-Box (Functional) Software Testing

Identifies bugs only according to software malfunctioning as they are revealed in its erroneous outputs. In cases that the outputs are found to be correct, black box testing disregards the internal path of calculations and process performed. This is also known as the Functional or Functionality testing.

White-Box (Structural) Software Testing

White box testing strategy deals with the internal logic and structure of the code. White box testing is also called as glass, structural, open box or clear box testing. The tests written based on the white box testing strategy incorporate coverage of the code written, branches, paths, statements and internal logic of the code etc.

The following table illustrates the testing techniques belong to what specific type of testing whether Black-Box or White-Box.

The above are the most common testing techniques most widely acceptable and can be adapted for most of the software projects undergoing in any organization. There can be hundreds of software testing techniques that can be elaborated by different prominent?software quality geeks?around the globe. Each of the above testing techniques will be discussed in the coming post at?Software Quality Geeks.?