What is Software Testing and What are Its Objectives?

What is Software Testing?

• According to ISTQB’s definition of software testing, “software testing is a process consisting of all life cycle activities, both static and dynamic, concerned with planning, preparation, and evaluation of software products to determine that they satisfied specified requirements, to demonstrate that they are fit for the purpose and to detect defects”.
• To understand more, let’s break down the definition down into parts:

1. Process: Testing is a process i.e. it is a series of activities rather than a single activity.
2. All life cycle activities: The software testing process takes place throughout the software development life cycle.
3. Both static and dynamic: Static testing involves testing without executing the code such as reviewing of requirement documents, and design documents to find errors whereas Dynamic testing checks the functional behaviour of the software systems by executing the code.
4. Planning: These are the activities that are carried out usually before and after test execution such as we plan what all area needs to be tested before testing, the status of the software under test, reporting on the testing progress etc. after the test execution is done.
5. Preparation: We need to choose what testing we will do by selecting test conditions and designing test cases.
6. Evaluation: After executing the test cases we must evaluate the results and evaluate whether the software under test working as per the requirement or not.

The Objective Of Software Testing:

• Software testing refers to the process of validating and verifying the artifacts and behaviour of the software under test. Software testing involves:

1. Verify and validate that the product is bug-free.
2. Determines if the product complies with the technical specifications, according to the design and development.
3. Ensure the product meets the user’s requirements efficiently and effectively.
4. Measure the product’s functionality and performance.
5. Find ways to improve software efficiency, accuracy, and usability.
6. The benefits of software testing also include preventing bugs, reducing development costs, and improving the quality and performance of the developed software product.

• Hence, it is very critical to follow certain principles and strategies to optimize the testing effort without deviating from the goal. To determine that you are following the right strategy for testing you need to stick to some basic software testing principles.