Despite the fact that the role of software testing may seem insignificant and few of us ever even think about it, this is especially true for people who are new to software development; the testing process, which is an equally integral part of development; and planning. Sooner or later, many organizations that develop software have come to the realization that they need to organize a quality assurance management system.
Testing is only the first step in determining the quality of software. Many people ask me what is meant by the “quality” of a software product, or what is the meaning of software testing? This question has more than one answer because the quality is of value to the individual and is therefore subjective. Each user has their own requirements for the product, and for one user, the product may be of high quality and will fully satisfy their needs — but for another user, the product will be useless, and the user will simply remove the software and will no longer want to use it in the future.
While testing was traditionally pushed to the end of the project, Agile places heavier importance on involving QA throughout a program’s lifecycle to build in quality. This means being able to think in terms of development and code, as well as ensuring that the cross functional operations flow smoothly.
The question now is how can a QA facilitate more test cases while still meeting Agile expectations? The answer here is automation and test management tools. Automation enables a QA to run necessary, often repetitious tests without having to manually execute them. This gives back considerable time to teams for other tasks like mitigating defects and ensuring that products are delivered with the highest quality possible.
Testing solves several major problems:
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It confirms that all the declared functional requirements have been implemented;
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It gives confidence in the quality of the final product;
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It confirms that the application has no errors in the code;
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It verifies how the user can work with the application and ensures that the end product is easy to use and does not contain features that may mislead users;
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It ensures that stored and processed data is protected from unauthorized access and hacking;
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It confirms that the application is able to operate in all the required conditions and on all supported operating systems or web browsers correctly.