Software Testing is one of the important stages of the software development process. Software Testing includes many different levels and aims to improve software quality as well as enhance user experience. Although this is a term quite familiar to the technology world, many people still do not know it. So what is Software Testing? How has AI been applied in software testing? In this article, we will explain it to you in detail!
1. What is Software Testing?
Software Testing is an indispensable process in the software development process. Source: fdp.edu.vn
Software Testing is a method to test whether the quality, functionality, and performance of an actual software product meets expected requirements.
The purpose of the software testing process is to review new software for errors as well as propose solutions to improve the accuracy and flexibility of the software.
2. Purpose of Software Testing
The main purpose of software testing is to detect errors, fix them, and improve software quality. Source: itprotoday.com
Software testing before launching products to the market serves the following purposes:
- Review and fix errors
The ultimate goal of Software Testing is to discover errors and weaknesses in the software. Software is often integrated by interconnected components to create features. If one of the software components fails, the entire system will fail. Therefore, Software Testing plays an extremely important role in checking software quality and detecting errors to ensure better-quality products.
- Improve software quality
In addition to fixing technical errors in software, Software Testing is also responsible for maintaining and improving the software’s quality. Software testing maintains quality with regression testing, periodic usability, compatibility, and security testing and provides product insights to developers for continuous data’s updates.
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Besides, to improve software quality, Software Testing will identify and resolve errors, determine the types of features that need improvement, and ensure the software is compatible with a variety of platforms and environments.
- Improve customer service quality
Applying rigorous software testing during development and testing helps improve the quality of customer service. If the product is increasingly improved, the customer experience will become more positive in the long run.
- Save costs for enterprises
Identifying vulnerabilities in new software will help enterprises save operating costs when launching products to the market. In many cases, when operating software applications in industries including finance, healthcare, and law, enterprises will be at risk of enormous damage and lawsuits if technical errors in this software are significantly found. Therefore, software testing also has a huge purpose of saving costs as well as protecting enterprises from legal risks.
3. Some common types of Software Testing
Software Testing includes two main types: functional testing and non-functional testing. Source: quora.com
There are currently many different types of software testing and each type has different functions. Some types of software testing include:
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- Functional Testing: This is a type of software testing that verifies whether an application delivers the expected results.
- Non-Functional Testing: This is a type of software testing that verifies whether the non-functional aspects of an application work effectively.
- Unit testing: A type of testing performed on an individual unit in an application.
- Integration testing: A type of testing performed on groups of application units to see how they work together.
- Acceptance testing: A type of testing that evaluates the application based on real-life situations.
- Security testing: Testing the software is secure enough and protects the application from threats or unauthorized access.
- Performance testing: Evaluates how well the software performs in terms of speed, stability, and resource usage.
- Load testing: This is a type of performance testing that evaluates how the software handles expected and peak loads.
- Usability testing: Testing measures the friendliness and ease of use of the application.
- Compatibility testing: This type of testing, also known as cross-browser testing, ensures that the software works correctly on different platforms, devices, browsers, or environments.
4. Basic testing levels of Software Testing
The software testing process is also known as the software testing cycle. Source: katalon.com
Software Testing includes 6 basic levels of testing, also known as Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC). The stages of STLC include the following steps:
4.1. Requirements analysis
This is the first phase of STLC, during this phase, technicians work with stakeholders involved in the software development process to identify and understand testing requirements. The parties will discuss, synthesize documents, and analyze them to create a foundation for building a testing strategy.
Software developers carefully study the requirements and translate them into code, including structure, design methods, and software engineering. They then divide the code into sections and test fields to avoid ambiguous requirements that could lead to invalid software testing.
Finally, testers and software developers will collaborate to evaluate the feasibility of performing the test. If these requirements are not met, they need to work again with the customer business to adjust or find alternative solutions.
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4.2. Make a test plan
After thorough analysis, a test plan is created. The test plan will clearly state many related issues such as:
- Testing Objective: Determine functionality, usability, performance, and compatibility.
- Outputs and final products: Document the test scenarios, test cases, and test data that will be generated and tracked.
- Test scope: Determines the area and input functionality of the application that will be tested.
- Resources: Cost estimates, manual or automated testing tools, and test data.
- Time: Set expected timelines for the testing process.
- Testing Methodology: Evaluate the testing techniques, level of testing, and types of testing to be used.
4.3. Develop test cases
After having the scenario and functionality to be tested, the tester will write detailed test cases and develop them. There should be a test management tool used to document execution, results, and recommended fixes for manual test cases.
4.4. Set up the test environment
Setting up a test environment can be done separately or in parallel with Test Case development. The testing environment is the software and hardware configuration on which the application is tested, including the database server, front-end environment, browser, hardware, etc.
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4.5. Perform testing
With clear goals, the QA team will write the test cases, scenarios, and test data necessary for implementation.
Testing can be performed manually or automatically. Manual testing is suitable when there is adequate human understanding and judgment whereas automated testing is suitable for iterative processes.
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) software has become more developed. Therefore, AI is also applied in Software Testing and brings positive results. To effectively apply AI to Software Testing, engineers need to have full knowledge of AI and computer science. In the future, the trend of using AI in testing will become more and more popular, so people need to improve their technology and knowledge to perform tests that require higher quality.
4.6. End of testing
This is the final stage of STLC. After testing, the tester will compile the results to evaluate and save important lessons for other future testing cycles.
5. Conclusion
The above article has introduced to you what Software Testing is, the principles, and basic testing levels. Recently, instead of using traditional testing, automated testing using AI technology is becoming a trend and bringing positive results to the software development field. Hopefully, this will be useful information for you!
