What is Software Testing?

Let's begin by imagining that a company has been working diligently on a product for two years. The release of the product's first version is rapidly approaching, and naturally, everyone is excited.

Then the big day arrives... The application looks great and has many useful features. However, the application is facing many bugs. Users are not satisfied and are leaving negative comments.

How can this situation be prevented? With software testing!

Software testing is a fundamental solution to this problem for companies. Software testing is the process of verifying the operation of a software system or application. It not only focuses on finding errors or defects in the software but also takes into account measures that will enhance its quality in terms of usability, accuracy, and efficiency.

 

What is Software Testing?

Software testing is the process of checking whether the quality, functionality, and performance of a software meet expectations. It also checks whether the actual results match the expected results and helps in identifying errors or deficiencies.

Software test experts can verify that the software conforms to the specified requirements and uncover any issues that need to be addressed by methodically applying a series of tests.

 

 

Why is Software Testing Important?

Software testing is extremely important to check whether the software is functioning correctly and to enhance its quality. When software testing is implemented effectively, it can increase the overall quality and usability of the final product and enable teams to innovate faster.

If software testing is not performed in the early stages of software development, the process can become costly later on. It can lead to financial loss and misuse of human resources.

To understand why software testing is important, let's look at examples that have caused serious issues in the past 👇:

• Facebook Outage: On October 4, 2021, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced a major outage due to misconfigured routers coordinating network traffic in Facebook's data centers.
• Citibank’s $900 Million Error: In 2020, Citibank accidentally transferred $900 million to another account due to a UI error in its payment processing software. This incident highlighted the critical importance of comprehensive UI testing.
• Boeing 737 MAX: The Boeing aircraft had issues with its maneuvering characteristics enhancement system. These issues led to two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. Investigations revealed flaws in the system's design and inadequate software testing.
• Yahoo Data Breach: Yahoo experienced a major data breach in September 2016, where identity information of 500 million users was stolen.

In summary, software testing helps prevent such scenarios from occurring. We can summarize the answer to the question of what software testing does as follows:

✅ Helps identify errors in the code.

✅ Increases the quality of the software.

✅ Builds customer trust.

✅ Reduces large costs.

✅ Optimizes the software.

✅ Speeds up the software development lifecycle.

 

What Does a Software Test Specialist Do?

A software test specialist has a wide range of responsibilities. However, we can summarize them as follows:

1. Quickly identifies errors.
2. Provides an overall assessment of product quality.
3. Checks whether the product meets quality standards.
4. Improves product quality over time.
5. Tries various testing methods.
6. Creates and continuously optimizes the testing process.
7. Strives to minimize the cost, time, and effort spent on testing.

 

What Should Be Analyzed in Software Testing?

Having good information and understanding the project's needs are important aspects that a test specialist needs to be aware of. A good understanding of the real-time environment in which the software will operate enables the test specialist to conduct software testing efficiently. The essential elements required in software testing can be summarized as follows:

• Modularity
• Sufficiency
• Design
• Accessibility
• Graphical User Interface
• Code
• User-Friendly
• Security

 

Software Testing and Debugging

Beginners in the field of software testing often confuse software testing with debugging. Although both seem similar because they help trace errors, they are actually different areas.

• 🔎 Software Testing: Helps you track and identify errors in the software.
• ⚙️ Debugging: Helps fix the errors identified by software test specialists by applying various techniques and using debugging tools.

To better understand, let's look at some fundamental differences;

 

What Are the Types of Software Testing?

Different types of software testing can be categorized into multiple categories based on testing objectives and testing strategies. Currently, there are two main types of software testing that software test specialists frequently use:

Functional Testing

Functional testing is a type of software testing performed to verify whether the software provides the expected output. It is achieved by comparing the actual output with the expected output. Test cases are prepared based on customers'/users' requirements.

The main controls provided by functional testing are as follows:

• Test specialists must fully understand how the application works.
• Always use accurate and complete data.
• Test data must be consistent with the application's functionality.
• All possible test scenarios must be considered.
• The results obtained should be compared with the expected results and recorded.

Different types of functional tests are as follows:

1. Unit Testing

A test type performed on a specific unit of the application is called unit testing. A unit is the smallest testable piece of software. Software test specialists typically use automation testing tools for unit testing. For example, testing whether the sign-up button redirects to the correct page link is an example of unit testing.

Unit testing includes two main types:

✅ White Box Testing: In this test type, the internal structure or underlying code of the application is tested. It makes it easier to identify any errors or defects in the application's design. White box testing is mostly preferred to improve the code. Inefficiencies in the code and unnecessary lines of code are identified in this type of test. Most code optimizations and security improvements occur as a result of this test. In summary, white box testing does not focus on how the web application works. It focuses more on how it can be improved.

✅ Gorilla Testing: Gorilla testing is a type of software testing where a module is tested frequently using some random inputs to ensure that the modules are error-free. This test type is performed manually and repetitively. Every part of the code is considered and tested with random inputs until the application crashes. In short, Gorilla testing checks the robustness of the application.

 

2. Integration Testing

Integration testing is a type of testing where it is ensured that the entire system meets the requirements in an integrated manner.

The purpose of integration testing is to find errors in interfaces, data flows, and interactions between modules in the system. Test specialists investigate how different units interact and how they produce outputs for various scenarios.

Integration testing includes the following type:

✅ Big Bang: All application modules are integrated and combined to form a complete system. Then testing is done for errors.
 

3. System Testing

System testing involves testing all the integrated modules of the system. This test allows test specialists to verify and confirm whether system requirements are met.

This test is very important when the system goes live because it allows creating a situation similar to a real-time scenario. Therefore, this test is performed to examine the application's behavior, architecture, and design.

System testing includes various software testing categories that verify the entire system. Some of these tests are:

✅ End-to-End (E2E) Testing: As the name suggests, end-to-end testing involves verifying the workflow of software applications from start to finish. This test type aims to mimic real user scenarios to validate the system's data integrity and integration.

✅ Black Box Testing: The black box testing method aims to verify functionalities without knowing the internal code structure of the software. Here, the main source of information is the requirements set by the customer. The QA team selects a specific function and provides input values to validate it. It checks whether the function provides the expected output. If the function does not provide the correct output, the test is considered failed; otherwise, the test is considered successful.

✅ Smoke Testing: Aims to verify whether the basic and complex functionalities of the system are working as expected. In other words, it helps determine whether the build code provided by developers is stable.

✅ Sanity Testing: This test is part of regression testing and checks whether the code changes made in the software are working as expected.

 

4. Acceptance Testing
 

When testing the software, after completing unit, integration, and system testing, the next step is to ensure the quality of the application. The QA team runs acceptance testing to define quality in predefined test cases and scenarios.
In acceptance testing, the QA team examines the entire system from the design view to its internal functions. Acceptance testing includes tests such as alpha testing, beta testing, user acceptance testing, and regression testing.

 

Non-Functional Testing

Non-functional testing is a type of software testing performed to verify whether the non-functional aspects of an application work as expected. This test type considers parameters such as reliability, usability, and performance.

Types of non-functional testing include:

1. Performance Testing

Performance testing is a type of testing that verifies the performance goals of a software application, such as response time and throughput capacity. This test reveals the impact of factors like network latency, database processing, data processing, and load balancing between servers on performance.

Types of software testing under performance testing include:

• Load Testing: Load testing checks the stability of the software under conditions where the number of users is equal to or less than the targeted level. For example, if your software can handle 250 users simultaneously with a response time of three seconds, load testing is conducted with 250 or fewer users. The aim is to verify the three-second response time.
• Stress Testing: This test checks the application's response time and stability by applying a load that exceeds the targeted number of users.
• Scalability Testing: Performed by applying a load that exceeds the designed number of users to check the application's scalability and determine the point at which the application may crash.
• Flood Testing: Flood testing checks the system's response time and stability by transferring a large dataset to the database. The QA team uses flood testing to examine the database's data management capacity.

 

2. Usability Testing

Simply put, the test specialist checks whether the application is user-friendly. It verifies whether the application's user interface is easy to use.

 

3. Security Testing

Testing

Security tests uncover the risks, threats, and vulnerabilities in the software application. They aim to prevent malicious attacks and identify weaknesses in the software system.

Types of security testing include:

• Penetration Testing: This test evaluates whether the software application is vulnerable to external attacks. A sanctioned cyber attack is carried out to identify the system's security limitations.
• Vulnerability Scanning: This test is performed using automated software to scan for security vulnerabilities in the system.
• Ethical Hacking: Ethical hacking testing involves hacking into an organization's software system. The aim is to uncover security vulnerabilities within the system.

 

Which Applications Are Tested?

Application Under Test (AUT) is generally divided into four main categories:

1. Web Testing
2. API Testing
3. Mobile Testing
4. Desktop Testing

Among these categories, web testing is the most popular. According to the Quality Status Report, web testing has been the most prioritized test type in recent years. You can see the proportions of other test types in the graph below 👇.

 

What Are Manual and Automated Tests?

Software testing includes many different types performed using various approaches. There are two main ways to conduct tests: manual and automated testing... Each approach has specific requirements and objectives at various stages of the software development lifecycle. Now, let's examine these two approaches in more detail:

👉 Manual Software Testing involves testing the software manually, i.e., without using any automation tool or script. The software test specialist takes on the role of the end-user. They test the software to identify any unexpected behavior or errors. Of course, in today's fast-paced software development lifecycle, scaling manual testing is challenging.

👉 Automated Testing involves using test scripts and software test automation tools to automate the software testing process. This process involves automating a manual process. Automated testing is used to run test scenarios that were manually executed in manual testing quickly and repeatedly.

 

What Are the Differences Between Manual and Automated Testing?

When starting any software test project, the test team and development team should sit together and develop a test plan that specifies which areas will be tested manually and which areas will leverage automated testing. The main differences between manual and automated testing are as follows:

 

Software Testing Tools

Software testing becomes easier with the availability of testing tools. These tools support various testing processes, including planning, collection, creation, test execution, and analysis.

Different tools are available for the automation testing approach that can be used as needed. For the most preferred software testing tools in software testing, you can also check out this article.

 

1. Selenium

Selenium is an open-source automated testing tool that tests web applications across various browsers and operating systems. It is one of the leading automation testing frameworks for web application testing. Selenium can automate and speed up the testing process while testing an application in a browser.

 

2. Cypress

Cypress is a popular end-to-end automation testing tool used in web applications. It is based on JavaScript and uses DOM manipulation techniques in browsers. With Cypress, you can write unit tests, end-to-end tests, and integration tests.

 

3. Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node.js library that allows for headless browser testing for Google Chrome. It uses commands in JavaScript to perform tests in Chrome browsers.

 

Software Test Career

Software testing is a critical phase of the software development process. If you want to understand software testing processes in more detail, you can check out our article on “Software Test Lifecycle.”

Today, the need for skilled professionals in this field is rapidly increasing. Do you want to advance your career as a Software Test and Automation Specialist? Then grab the opportunity to develop yourself in this field by immediately checking out our free Software Test Bootcamp trainings!