Myths of Software testing

Following are the some common myths of Software testing –

1. Anyone can test the application and couple of hour’s session is enough to start testing

Reality – Testing is a skill and an art. Testing is not as easy and as pie. Tester becomes great tester with experience. The tester should have qualities like Observation, Reading between the lines, Probing, Patience, Understanding perspectives, Knowledge about testing practices, Ready to dig deep,  Fearless and Strict follower of quality process.

2. Everything can be tested and application will be 100% bug free

Reality - The testing is to uncover the defects or bugs in the applications. Testing is related to cover the application functionalities with some definite scenarios. This is also called as coverage. With all the possible coverage only critical defects will be uncovered from the possible finite paths. There are always possibilities of having more combinations of inputs, process and could be different negative scenarios. These may uncover more defects and still it is not possible to assure 100% bug free applications.

3. Testing is less important than development and testing can be done any time during development lifecycle by any developer

Reality – In real world testing is as important as development or sometimes carries more value than the development. There are many examples of great looking software failing due to inadequate testing and quality checks. Developer as mentioned above will not have the art of testing and more important will not have the objective of testing. Hence developers cannot be testers unless formally trained and worked on couple of projects with actual testers. There are a few real life examples where developers who tried to enter in testing failed miserably. Testing starts early in the lifecycle, as early as the requirements are drafted. The static testing will uncover the requirement defects; here the domain experienced tester plays a critical role.

4. Everything can be automated and will not require manual testers. Any automation tool can be used to automate and QTP / Selenium are the only options to automate.

Reality – Purpose of Automation is to avoid repetitive manual tasks. If the task is not repetitive then investment on automation is not worth. For example one of the web applications required a few field validations on one of the form which manually takes 2-4 minutes, if this is automated it will take a day’s efforts, and automation tool. Such single features cannot be a candidate for automation. Technically functional testing alone cannot be considered for automation. However the regression suite can be a good candidate of automation. Manual testers will test the application manually and then those functional test cases which are critical to business will become a part of regression suite. This suite can be automated. Apart from automating regression suite few other repetitive tasks like smoke test and sanity tests can be automated.

Automation can be only feasible once the application feasibility test is done. There are many tools available in the market. Few tools are free to use and others may have some licensing fees. The application feasibility to involve but not limited to checking application technology, application environment, application architecture, deployment frequency and regression test cases are available.