There is an entire phase in the SDLC dedicate to BNH-Software testing. Traditionally, it’s done after the developers have finish building the software – it’s hand over to the testing team to perform tests on it. This is, in my opinion, the most important part of the SDLC process.
The reason it’s so important is that it is the major factor in getting good quality software. Developing software that works and works well is the ultimate aim of a project, and the testing stage is where this is done.
The software testing phase can broken down into smaller stages, each of which have their own importance:
Unit Testing – testing each component of the software individually, to check that it works correctly in isolation.
System Testing – testing the entire system as a whole, ensuring all of the components work as expected.
Regression Testing – testing the entire system against a pre-defined list of tests, to ensure the new changes don’t impact existing functionality. This is important for upgrades and updates to software.
These are the main types of software testing and each of them are important. I believe there are three main reasons that we do software testing.
Software Testing Results In Less Maintenance
The aim of software testing is to ensure good quality software. Good quality software means it has less defects or issues, it works well, and does what it needs to do. When you do software testing as part of a development project. You are aiming to pick up and find all of the issues in the system before it is release to the end users.
In an ideal world, the developers will be creating software that works first go, and does not have any issues. However, this is not often the case – bugs appear in the system and the software testing phase is there to pick it up. If it’s found before the release, that’s great. If it’s found after the release, it means that time will need to spent finding a fix and performing more testing on it – all while the end users are using the software.
The time taken to fix defects after the software is release is significantly more than during the testing phase. This is because the fixes need further testing. And need to align to any maintenance releases or other schedules that the organization has set up. Getting it right the first time when you release it is almost always the preferred approach.
