What is Software Testing? Your Essential Guide

As there are many explanations to the question – what is software testing, I thought I would share my experience of what I think software testing is in the real world, and compare it to definitions of software testing found across the Internet.

In the Beginning…. Software

In order to explain what software testing is, we need to first understand what software is.

Software in its basic form is a set of instructions that aims to produce a desired result. These instructions, known as software programs, reside on computers or similar devices.

Software is all around us. It is an integral part of our lives, from business applications (like banking) to consumer products (like cars and TVs). Most people in the developed world use software. Whether it be on mobile phones, the latest tablet devices, laptops or personal computers, using software is now part of our daily routine.

I am sure you’ve experienced using software that didn’t work as expected. In most cases, software faults can lead to problems, including loss of time, money, and could even cause injury or death. For example, a fault in an air traffic control system could risk the lives of many hundreds of people.

So What Causes a Software Defect?

Software is specified by analysts and written by developers and programmers. In other words, humans like you and me! And humans are not perfect. A human being can make an error during the development of software.

A human error will produce  a fault, bug, or defect in the software program or in it’s documentation. When defective code is run, the software system may fail to do what it is supposed to do, or do something it shouldn’t do, causing a failure.

Environmental conditions may also cause software to fail.  For example, magnetism, electronic fields, and pollution could affect the hardware that the software is running on, causing it to fail.

This is why there is a need and a rising demand for software to be tested.

What is Software Testing?

Simply, it is a process of checking that software behaves as expected and provides information to stakeholders (customers/users/managers) about the quality of a product.

In order to reduce the risk of software failure occurring during normal operation, testing of software is usually done during every phase of the software development process. If defects are found,they can be corrected before the final system is released.

There are a number of reasons why software testing is required (as shown in the diagram below):

1. To find bugs
2. To ensure that software is fit for purpose
3. To give confidence
4. To mitigate risk
5. To measure quality
6. To provide information to stakeholders

CONCLUSION:

Indium Software is a Specialist Software Testing Services provider.Indium Software’s comprehensive suite of testing services covers Test Advisory, Functional testing and Non-Functional testing specializing in Automation testing, Digital, DevOps, Agile, Web, Mobility, IOT, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to name a few. Indium Software is helping clients globally transform their QA services function to achieve zero production defects, reduce QA cycle times up to 80% and lower overall QA costs up to 60% with its Next-Gen Testing Solutions, Modern Testing Approach, Skilled Teams and Global Delivery Model. We are also an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified company.

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How to Choose a Trustworthy Software Testing Company

Every software development company requires testing of their software regularly. This can either be done by using inhouse expertise or outsourcing to a software testing company. Many people outsource software testing. 

The main difficulty in outsourcing lies in finding the proper software testing company. One of the most important processes in the software development life cycle is software testing. This is essential in the development of efficient software. 

Many people consider this as the most important phase in the development life cycle. The future of software developing company mainly depends on the software testing company. Hence, the company chosen must be economical, efficient and reputable. Further, they should offer the services that guarantee the safe and efficient release of software for marketing.

Because of technological advances there has been a boom in the software development and to service the software development companies a large number of software testing companies have come into being throughout the world and there is acute competition between these companies to get maximum business for software testing.

They will publicize in such a way to create an impression that they have their best product. Hence, you should be very careful in your selection of software testing company. You must ensure that you employ a software testing company that offers testing services to your requirement and the cost should be competitive/ economical.

The following are the factors that you should look for while selecting the software testing company.

The testing company should validate and verify all of your software applications, software products, web sites and any web related applications.

Software is a resource and thus must be given appropriate security. Software also contains and controls data and other resources. Any business, large or small will be having costly software resources which need to be protected. Software should be designed to operate at a level of security testing  that is consistent with the potential harm that could result from the loss, inaccuracy, alteration, unavailability, or misuse of the data and resources that it uses, controls, and protects.

The software testing company engaged by you should assist you in having a security testing abilities to protect your computers from security threats like data theft, data corruption, which would result in downtime for your company.

Performance testing is one of the important software testing types. The term Performance testing is often used interchangeably with ’stress’ and ‘load’ testing. Many testing companies offer only stress testing as a part of their performance testing. 

In software engineering, performance testing is defined as testing that is performed, to determine how fast some aspect of a system performs under a particular workload. It can also serve to validate and verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage. A good software company, in addition to stress testing should provide the complete testing cycle including strategy, planning, test management and generation, execution and reporting of all test results for the life of the software.

The functional testing covers installation tests, Regression testing, upgrade and backward compatibility testing, accessibility testing, internationalization and local testing, API testing and testing of  user interface, database management, security and networking. The testing provided by your software testing company should be thorough and complete and include all the testing processes given above. 

They should also test the software for functions such as user commands, searches, user screens, integrations and data manipulation. The regression testing is an important feature since it is very useful to test software automatically after corrections are made. The functional testing gives results equivalent to a good "satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" policy. The functional testing should be efficient and cause least downtime.

The software testing company you are proposing to engage should help in automating the testing process on your request. Many companies do this voluntarily. It may not be possible to test everything on the software; but a good testing company will be able to provide a proper risk assessment. 

Risk assessment is the first step in a risk management process. Risk assessment is the determination of quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a concrete situation and a recognized threat. The risk assessment given by the software testing company will forewarn you on the possibility of occurrence of a problem on the software and also steps to be taken for eliminating such problems.

In order to choose good software company you should also get references from the sister business companies which have used the services of the software testing and quality assurance company. Alternately you can also check reviews about the company’s credibility and performance.

Regression Testing Software: Software That Really Helps the Software

Testing can be defined as the act of subjecting anything to experimental test in order to determine how well something works. As the name implies testing is carried out to check the correctness of things to facilitate taking remedial action. This is one of the important phases in the development in any field.

In the process of software development cycle, software testing is given maximum importance by the Information Technology people. Testing can either be manual or automatic. One of the types of automatic testing software is regression testing software.

What is regression testing? Regression is defined as an abnormal state in which development has stopped prematurely. Regression testing is the process of testing changes to computer programs to make sure that the older programming still works with the new changes. Regression testing is part and parcel of the program development process and is normally done by code testing specialists.

The regression testing is carried out until the software is free of regression bugs i.e. until correct results are obtained. Before a new version of a software product is released, the old test cases are run against the new version to make sure that all the old capabilities still work.

Nowadays many software testing software are available in the market and these are used only for software testing. As against this, the regression testing software is capable of testing of the code or the software. Such software is readily available in the market as a complete package.

The standard packages include a lot of testing methods and it is left to the customer to choose the method suitable for his development. In earlier days, the companies were subcontracting the software testing to outside companies. Nowadays the trend is changing and the companies are developing their own software for testing which will reduce the human effort.

This is done to reduce the extent of outsourcing. Some companies do partial outsourcing software testing. One can draw an analogy between the testing software and anti-virus software that are installed in most of the computers.

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. The original virus may modify the copies, or the copies may modify themselves. Some viruses may erase all data or do nothing but reproduce themselves.

The antivirus software is computer programs that attempt to identify, neutralize or eliminate malicious software. These are designed not only to combat viruses but also combats threats such as worms, phishing, rootkits, malware etc. The bugs in the computer software are analogous to virus in a computer whereas the antivirus software is analogous to regression software or any other automated software used for testing.

The regression testing is carried out using the Regression testing software. This test is useful in finding out the errors in the code or in the software. The regression testing method calls for conducting software tests in a particular sequence.

There are a number of methods in which regression testing can be conducted. For each of these methods individual disks are available in the market and one can use any of these disks to conduct test on the software and its code. Normally these disks can be used for a number of years beyond which one can use this as a platform for further development.

Regression testing software is automated software testing that uses different methods for testing the code and software. Once it is applied to any software it automatically checks for errors. It is in the interest of the user to install such software for testing which in turn will save time and cost.

Conclusion :

Hope you enjoyed with this article to know the importance of Software testing and QA Services. So i am expecting more reviews from you people through comment sections.

Thanks and Regards,
Zeppelin

Indium Software - Software testing Services | Top Software testing companies 

Software QA Testing: Testing That Helps The People

Software testing and quality assurance services (SQA) consists of a means of monitoring the software engineering processes and methods used to ensure quality. This is different from software quality control. The quality control controls product quality whereas software quality assurance is a control of processes.

SQA includes processes such as software design, coding, source code control, code reviews, change management, configuration management, and release management whereas the quality control includes reviewing requirements documents and software testing. Software QA testing is the quality assurance test of the software under consideration.

Quality assurance services testing ensures that any agreed-upon standards and procedures between the developer and the customer are followed strictly and the features of the software must be made fully functional testing and functions as described by the company.

Nowadays SQA has become very important because many people consider this as a source of information for taking purchase decisions of this product. Critical acclaim of SQA of the company product will make or break the purchasing decisions.

Many people buy software based on the Software QA testing reviews published in various technical magazines.

Learn more about : What is Software Testing

For such people the Software QA testing is of great assistance since they have a source which gives details of the product they are interested in purchasing. In case the reviews based on SQA are good the interested persons will purchase it.

This helps the customer because he is satisfied with the product and also helps the software developing companies because they are able to sell the product and also added a satisfied customer to the list of buyers. Many companies initially go for internal software QA testing to iron out all the problems in the software before it is marketed outside.

Once the experts in the software QA testing panel approves putting the software into the market stating that the software is up to date and will have enough followers then the company will start making marketing efforts for selling the product.

They will spend a large amount of money in advertising the product to make people aware of the product’s existence and also its superiority over other software.

People are exposed to the heavy advertisement done by the company which makes them know more about the product. Since the software has been critically acclaimed by experts in the field, there will be sufficient buyers of this quality software.

Once the software produced by the company becomes popular because of its better quality, many people will start buying this software and the customer base of the company will start increasing with this. This in turn makes the company grow faster.

People start buying software from this company because of brand name itself. This company slowly but surely will start monopolizing the market in its field and out beat other software companies.

Over a period, software QA testing has become a separate field in itself.  Nowadays many youngsters are taking up software testing as a career for their future.

With the increase in the popularity of the software testing the demand for software testing courses also will go up. Many students will take up this course which will give them a bright future and financial security.

Conclusion :

Hope you enjoyed with this article to know the importance of Software testing and QA Services. So i am expecting more reviews from you people through comment sections.

Thanks and Regards,
Zeppelin

Indium Software - Software testing Services |Top Software testing companies 

Software Testing – 5 Tips to Writing LoadRunner Scripts

Our Software Testing Training in Chennai has been busy taught LoadRunner scripts. A LoadRunner tool is one of the best tools we utilize at Optimums and It’s is a very powerful application and its enables you to build the automated testing scripts that could be measure the end-to-end performance testing services . By automating the performance testing, you can able to consistent bench-marking and conduct reliable.

Software Testing and quality assurance services ourselves spread to embrace the variety of testing courses to sharpen business prospects at all ends. The Testing is offered contains Manual and Automation testing certification such as QTP, Selenium, and Load Runner.

Here are the 5 tips for to writing LoadRunner scripts.

Although LoadRunner HTML/HTTP protocol its has been flexible and reliable, it’s always best to try other available protocols in LoadRunner to establish. which ones is most compatible with application under the test. LoadRunner Protocol Analysis is good start.

Transaction names should utilize the naming convention. which allows the ordering and sorting so that transaction summary graphs, can be easily show the transactions in a proper order.

• After recording script, will make sure rearrange the “Think Times” to be placed in outside of the transactions to avoid placed think time as a part of the actual transaction time.
• Changing the runtime settings, a Browser emulation of the new user and Browser Cache handling can assist resolving some of the playback issues.
• Make utilization of the Several functions Description properties such as web_button can assist to identifying the right component to perform the action on.

How does LoadRunner work?

A scenario is makes that includes the script can be executed, number of the virtual users that are required, prerequisites to runs the testing and expected output from the Software testing. Then the number of Vusers requirements is build it could be a less few hundreds or it’s to be an many of few thousands.

The scenarios could be an manual or goal-oriented. In the earlier, LoadRunner its generates the scenarios depends on the goals mentioned by tester. while latter, the details to could be entered manually.

Then, a series of actions are to be performing as a part of testing scenario are recorded in Vuser Script. A load generator is utilize to running the Vusers and which is create the needed amount of the load on system. A business processes it’s required to be measured the represented in transactions form. Once the requirements load is generated, system behavior is could be observed and noted.

Features of LoadRunner

Some of the most important features of LoadRunner are:

• VuGen easily (Virtual User Generator) can easily record testing steps that are users perform the order to testing an application.
• The Vuser concepts its enables the testers to runs a test-cases in the form of Vuser thus reducing manual intervention.
• There is don’t have any limitation on the number of Vusers it can be created. If the appropriate license has been obtained as per the requirements.
• LoadRunner can be work on the several organizations environments thus its providing the wide applicability.
• All Vusers able to control the form of single dashboard.
• Using single load generator, its almost 1000 Vusers could be generated.
• The LoadRunner supports several protocols. Runs on multiple protocol scripts could be easily done.
• LoadRunner can working with the most of ERP/CRM systems offered by Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft and Siebel.
• The analysis and monitoring interface offered is user friendly and grasp very easily.
• We are the No.1 LoadRunner training institute in Chennai which provides you training from our well experienced MNC professionals. We offered high and best quality of LoadRunner Training in Chennaidepends upon the present business standards. Our Training will be handled with live projects.

We are the one of the best provider of Software Testing courses in Chennai by maintaining the placement record comparing to any other training institutes in Chennai. Our candidates are good enough to pass the first interview once completed the classes here.

Usability Testing: Making Sure a Human Being Can Use the Software

The software development life cycle consists of Planning, Requirement analysis, Design & Development, Implementation, Testing & Integration, Evaluation, Release and support. The testing of software is one of the major steps in the development cycle. 

The testing is carried out from start of development to marketing of the software product. Different types of testing are done throughout the software life cycle. Everyone of these software tests are of equal importance to the software testing engineer. 

For the user, the most important type of testing other than security testing is usability testing.

Usability testing is a technique used to evaluate a product by testing it on users. 

This type of testing gives direct input on how real users use the system and hence is an irreplaceable usability practice. Usability testing focuses on measuring a human-made product's capacity to meet its intended purpose. 

Read more about : https://www.indiumsoftware.com/software-testing-services/

Examples of products that commonly benefit from usability testing are web sites or web applications, computer interfaces, documents, or devices. Usability testing is carried out in order to get an assurance from the user that the software is usable in the same manner it is intended to be used. 

Even if the software is functional testing services and performs well it does not mean that it is usable. For any software to be considered as usable, the person using the software under testing should not only be able to understand all the functions it can perform but also how to make it perform those functions. The person should also be able to understand the instructions given.

If an average person working on the software is able to follow the directions of using the software, run the software easily and make it perform as it was designed to perform then the software is usable. The jargon normally used in industry circles for this is “User friendly Interface”. 

User friendly interface indicates that the average user who has no knowledge of computers or software must be able to understand it well and use it. If the user finds it difficult in understanding instructions, moving through the menus or any other problems the same has to be rectified by the software programmers and testers. 

This testing will give a feedback on the ease and effectiveness of navigation, usefulness of content, effectiveness of presentation and task success rate. A usable program should be efficient, accurate, have a good recall value and has an emotional attachment to the user.

During the design and development of any software the designer is more concerned in bringing out software which is competitive with the companies’ software.

The emphasis at this point is on design/ competition and not the user. Because of this mental makeup they tend to design the software with considerable complexity which the user finds it difficult to understand. 

The designer is not concerned with the comfort level of the user at that stage. Typical examples of this are some of the popular computer games software wherein new version is more complex than the previous one. The most successful usability test is performed when the general public is using the software without any problems.

Click here to read more about: Unit Testing

The usability test performed in the presence of the developers has been one of the most successful methods for testing usability. 

In this, people perform certain tasks on command from developers and the developers observe how it responds under any given circumstance. 

The halfway testing theory, as adopted from Jakob Nielsen's research states that 95% of usability problems can be discovered using halfway testing technique. In this method, they ask at random 5 or 6 strangers who are “passing by” and ask them to perform certain specific tasks with the software. 

No in house technicians are involved in this testing. This is where the name "hallway testing" came from. In practice, it is established that most of the usability problems are identified and solved by this method.

Conclusion

Hope these are the important and valuable Mobile app Testing services which could be followed by any vendors. And your thoughts and suggestions are welcome through comments. And hereby the QA Services resides with perfect solutions and techniques desired by leading and innovative techniques.

Indium Software - Software testing and Quality Assurance services | Software testing Companies 

Unit Testing: Testing the Source Code Piece By Piece

One of the important stages in the software development life cycle, whether the software is for business or pleasure, is software testing. 

The software testing is useful in ensuring the correctness of all programs and performs all functions in the manner in which it is expected to do. 

There are a number of testing types used for testing the software starting from the development of the application until it reaches the marketing phase. Before it is released for production any software has to undergo series of testing such as black box/ white box/ gray box testing, unit/ integration/ system/ acceptance testing, functional testing/ non-functional testing and verification and validation. 

The unit testing indicated above is one of the important testing types and in this each individual unit of the application is validated for correct working. 

Software consists of many different applications which have to be tested independently for security, performance, functionality, usability testing, reliability, efficiency, portability and maintainability etc. A unit is the smallest part of the software application. 

Each of the modules of the software comprises of a number of individual units. There are a large number of such units in the application software. Offshore Software testing services can either be done for an individual unit or a group of units. In case there is a problem in the group testing, the testing has to be done at unit level. 

Unit testing is the method of making sure that each of the individual units is working properly in isolation. In this, testing is carried out on the minimal software component or module. They get integrated once the module testing is completed.

One of the many benefits of unit testing is the ability of the software programmer to change or improve the way the computer program is read without affecting the functionality/ performance of the program. 

Test cases are prepared for all the functions of the program and this facilitates easy identification and correction of the problems in case of changes made. It is possible to test the units first and eliminate all the bugs that appear during this testing.

Want to learn more about: Stress Testing

The entire integrated program can be tested after debugging all the unit modules. This makes the process easier, faster and efficient.

The test report based on unit testing is more or less similar to a written report on the system. This is very useful for the programmers because whenever they are interested in knowing the functionality a unit provides they only have to look at the documentation provided by the unit tester. 

Unit testing comprises of many unit test cases and these are critical to the unit's ultimate success. The test cases show characteristics that indicate negative behavior in the software or inappropriate functions.

Unit testing alone will not be sufficient for software approval; however, this combined with other testing types will be very effective. It is not possible to trap all errors in the software either by software testing or unit testing. 

Unit testing is useful in testing the functionality of the unit. It may not be possible to detect integration or performance problems during unit testing.

Unit testing can be carried out either manually or through automated tests. The primary objective of unit testing is to pinpoint the defects in the software, isolate that unit and correct it.

Conclusion

Hope these are the important and valuable Mobile app Testing services which could be followed by any vendors. And your thoughts and suggestions are welcome through comments. And hereby the QA Services resides with perfect solutions and techniques desired by leading and innovative techniques.

Indium Software - Software testing and Quality Assurance services | Software testing Companies