Is Software Testing Really Important?

When the vendor provides their major annual release, the organization probably goes through formal testing. But what about minor releases, patches, and bug fixes? Do you not always do formal testing cycles, gambling with the testing roulette wheel?

Testing is a critical step in the implementation process to ensure that the software functions as intended, meet requirements, and delivers the desired outcomes. It helps to identify any errors or defects that may impact the system’s functionality, reliability, or performance. The testing effort involved will vary depending on the type and size of the change.

Types Of Testing

There are several different types of testing to customize and meet your needs. Some different testing types are:

1. Accessibility Testing – tests accessibility for users with disabilities (e.g., color blindness, captioning, assistive technologies) to ensure the software meets applicable accessibility standards.
2. Compatibility Testing – to verify that the software works across different devices, browsers, and operating systems.
3. Documentation Testing – to test the accuracy of the documentation. Solicit feedback from the users about the accuracy and usefulness of the documentation.
4. Integration Testing – tests the different modules to ensure they integrate and properly work together.
5. Negative Testing – intentional testing for invalid inputs (e.g., an invalid date like February 30, or a numeric value exceeding the maximum allowed) to verify that the software recognizes and processes the error.
6. Regression Testing – testing to ensure that the change hasn’t negatively impacted any existing features or functionality.
7. Security Testing – includes tests like penetration testing to identify vulnerabilities in security.

Testing Best Practices

An organization may not test because they “trust” the vendor, or they underestimate the potential risks and consequences of not testing. But with everyone so busy with competing priorities, another rationale is resource constraints. They don’t think they have adequate resources (e.g., skilled personnel, time, or budget) to test. Whatever the reason, they may assume that the risks of not testing are minimal or manageable and may not prioritize testing.

There are best practices for testing technology that can help you prioritize testing. First are the people resources. Make sure you involve IT as well as the relevant business users to make sure all testing aspects are adequately assessed. There is a relevant quote: “Many hands make light work.” Next is to have a separate test environment so that you’re not testing in production.

When testing, create comprehensive test plans/scripts to provide a roadmap for the testing process. Define the testing scope, resources, and scenarios including real-life scenarios to test functionality, security, and performance. Document the test results comparing the actual outcomes against the expected outcomes. If the test doesn’t pass, track the defect using an issue-tracking system. This will allow you to capture, prioritize, and track issues to resolution.

Unlike a birthday/anniversary party, nobody likes big surprises (aka a major issue) after implementing a seemingly minor patch into production. If you properly test and there are issues, you can decide whether to accept the risk moving forward and temporarily create a workaround.

If you install the software (even a patch or bug fix) without testing, then you introduce the risk of having unintended results/consequences. Does the risk of not testing outweigh the time savings of not testing? If you follow the best practices, you can make the testing process more efficient.

For more information on the value of testing,?follow me on LinkedIn!

Originally published on Work It Daily - https://www.workitdaily.com/is-software-testing-really-important