Top Software Testing Myths
Software testing is the process of evaluating a software item to detect differences between given input and expected output. Also to assess the feature of A software item. Testing assesses the quality of the product. Software testing is a process that should be done during the development process.These are the top 5 software testing misconceptions and myths (in no particular order) that are plaguing our modern day testers these days:
1. Software Testing is a Mundane, No-Brainer Job
Testing can indeed be boring and feel like a mundane monotonous task if YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG! I’ve seen people jump to this conclusion (that testing is boring) because they see (and believe) testing as ‘repeatedly’ doing same tasks over and over again. Software Testing Training in chandigarh clears up most the misconceptions regarding Software Testing.
Going by that logic, programming, accounting, banking and any day-to-day vital activities like eating, sleeping etc can also be considered boring if you just look at the ‘repetition’ part. Moreover, do you stop eating and sleeping because it is a monotonous task that you are needed to do daily? Or do you change your food menu and habits when you feel tired?
But if you are really a good tester, then you would probably look at testing as an information collecting activity done with an intent of exploring and discovering answers [NOT just flaws or bugs in the software] to queries that nobody had asked before. To achieve so, you would need to study, explore, observe, analyze, use the software to be able to evaluate it. Does that sound bore to you?
If you ever get bored of testing something, don’t blame your job. Rather blame yourself and CHANGE the way you are testing, thinking and planning your test ideas and before you know it testing the software would start feeling so much of fun, once again.
2. A Tester Should Test Everything
Yes, as a tester I can, of course, test everything provided as a project stakeholder you can provide me with an indefinite supply of resources, infrastructure, budget, time and what-not!
It is foolish to expect that a tester (or a testing team) can test each and every test scenario, theoretically possible within their given time-frame and with the resources. While an exceptional tester would generate serious test scenarios and prioritize them and test, it is impractical to hypothesize that it is possible to test ALL those scenarios. Wouldn’t that be same as supposing ‘testing can deliver a 100% bug-free product’?
Let’s take a simple example. We all know that life-critical systems like instruments used in medical facilities, airplanes, spaceships etc go through a stringent set of testing procedure to ensure nothing goes wrong when they are operational. However, can the tester(s) test a flight actually predict and test considering the actual air pressure, altitude, number of passengers and crews, the total load on the flight, wind speed, temperature etc, on any particular day? Can their simulator simulate any random day’s environmental and other variables that the flight will have to take when in production?
3. A Tester’s Job is to Find Bugs
It is easy, especial for someone who has just recently started the career as a software tester, to get confused about the responsibilities of a tester. And many often fall into the deception of believing that finding a lot of bugs in the software is their prime objective.
Finding bugs in the software is a significant part of what a tester should do. But the story doesn’t end there. Along with just finding bugs, testers do analyze the requirements, review the product architecture, provide ideas to make the product more user-friendly, authenticate the help documents and a lot of other things.
4. Testers Add No Value to The Software
People who conceive this myth often are made to believe that a tester’s role is strictly limited and adds no value to the product.On the contrary, an experienced tester is often an expert of the system (product) under test. Unlike the programmers who often spend most of their time working on a very specific area, function or component of the application, the tester examines and understands how the entire system works from an end-to-end standpoint. Testers get a better chance to demonstrate their understanding of the product in a way that adds value to the product.
5. Test Automation Will Eradicate Human Testers:
This is the most outrageous prediction that many so-called self-proclaimed test automation gurus are making at the moment. What is even more insane is the fact that there are actually testers who are believing it!
Can test automation tools replace human testers? I’d say a big NO. Why this is not going to happen ever, is simple. The idea of Computer-aided software engineering (CASE)emerged and suddenly people started talking how computers would start writing codes and in turn can make human programmers obsolete. But whether that actually happened is a matter of everyone’s guess today.Similarly, test automation is never going to substitute human testers, UNLESS, of course, humanoid auto-bots take over our planet. Until that (judgment day) arrives, we human testers will never be dispensable for a very simple reason. We have the test automation tools do not have; it is ’emotions’. The users of the software we test are always humans, it is the human testers who are going to have this benefit of testing it better than any automation tools.
Having said that, test automation tools are not necessarily bad for testing. They can actually be useful for testing definite aspects of testing (like large calculations, testing performance and load, recurrent regression tests etc) that would otherwise be very time-consuming for a normal human tester. Hence, under definite contexts, automation tools can act as additional tools to aid human testers; NOT to replace them.