The concept and main characteristics of testing.
The concept and main characteristics of testing.
So, what can we call “software testing”? It is the process aimed at the identification of differences between the program behavior and the expectations of the interested persons. The quality of the product can be considered as the correspondence of product’s parameters to the necessary standards and requirements.
Testing helps to assess the risks related to the release of software in its current state and plans the actions to reduce these disadvantages. It is important to understand that there are no error-free products, and it is usually impossible to test the product completely (as the quantity of various applied tests tends to infinity), therefore it is considered ready for distribution, if it meets the customer’s requirements and there are no errors, making the work with this product impossible with this product impossible. Testing is carried out by the testers, quality-control engineers, rarer – the programmers themselves. The results of their work are the reports on the defects – the deviations of expected product’s behavior from the actual one (what we see is not what we expect from the product). Based on such reports, the programmers can fix the code faults. But don’t get confused, as the testers don’t produce the defects, but just find and point them out (while those already exist in the product at the moment of testing). By the time of delivery of the product to the customer, the testers also provide an extended report on the status of the project, on the basis of which the customer can judge about the degree of consistency of the work performed to the demanded one.
The first official report on the defect of PC performance is dated 9 September 1947. Working with the relay computer, Grace Hopper found the equipment failures. After disassembling the computer, her team saw that the bug got stuck between the moving parts, which had hindered proper computer operation. The insect was extracted and attached to the error report. This was the first official report on the defect, which was named after the dead insect– Bug Report. Since 1988 until today, the testing has included planning, projecting, creating and test support.
Testing starts to cover all the stages of the software development.
The testers get not only an expanded range of responsibilities, but also a new specialty – Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer, whose work is to improve the programming processes inside the security testing companies. It is also important to remember that the testers must be involved in the process of development as soon as possible to adjust their actions with the programmers and correct the inaccuracies of product documentation (including design, architecture and requirements). Thus, the testers must be involved before the beginning of writing the program code. They are also the final link the product goes through before its release.
Which means that the tester will have work, as long as designers, architects and programmers do.