While we have been always making clamours about the Quality all time, quality is a product of testing. The effort towards releasing a software with quality, started with debugging by the developers. It was Glenford Myers who distinguished debugging and software testing in 20th century. The testing independence provides more efficiency in the process by providing the unbiased testing. The testing team once upon a time, often blamed for bottle neck in the project is now considered to play a crucial role in delivering a “quality” software.
Let’s get more deeper understanding about Quality of Software. The Software quality is defined in terms of both the functional and non-functional characteristics of the software. The functionalities are expected to provide the results desired by the client. It is about what a system does. The non-functional characteristics are about how system behaves. It is defined in terms of reliability, maintainability, efficiency, usability, and portability of the software. The software is considered to be more “reliable” if it is consistently performing well, by giving the desired results. The “maintainability” of the software is about how easily the software can be repaired and reused. The performance of the software defines its “efficiency”. The user friendliness of software defines the “usability” of the software. The “portability” of the software can be associated with its use on the different devices.
The errors or the human mistakes by the IT team cause the defects in the software which in turn cause the software failures. The software failures affect the customers greatly, cause security breaches and result in permanent damage of the business reputation of the client. Software testing is done by an independent team of software testers to ensure the quality of the software. The defects in the software are uncovered by the testing team by conducting the rigorous testing activities. Though the software testing does not prove the absence of defects but identifies the numerous defects and reduces the risk of failure. Software testing activities are to be started at the early stages of the software development to avoid the future defects. Early testing of the software can reduce the time and cost of the software development and even improve the quality of software to a greater extent.
The software testing has evolved till date to deliver the software product to meet the high expectations of client. The new technology software testing tools greatly support the software testing activities and have the capabilities of testing most items of software automatically. The software testing frameworks, worldwide accepted software testing policies, best practices make the software testing a separate subject of study. The software testing jobs now require the QA testers with software quality assurance certification, though not yet mandatory.
Check your understanding:
- What are the nonfunctional characteristics of the software that define the quality of software?
- Why is it important for software testers to have software quality assurance certification?
