Myths and Facts about Software Testing

Being a part of QA from the past few years, I have heard about various myths and experienced many obvious facts. Starting my career as a manual tester and crawling towards test automation has made my life more challenging and thrilling to accept more and more test opportunities. Though the viral myths may not have direct impact on Software Testing, however, it is important to explode these myths and share the facts and importance of Software Testing. 

Many people think that Software Testing is an inferior job and doesn’t have a bright career. Do you also think so? People who have thoughts similar to this must know the myths versus reality-facts of testing.

Software Testing Myths

1. Automation Testing Eliminates the Need of Manual Testing: Ohh really? If yes, how would you test an application according to the end user perspective? I am pretty sure end users will not be using the services of software by automating it. Even exploratory or ad-hoc testing can only be done manually. There’s a high probability that our automation tests may provide false positive or false negative results. Many applications whether a web app or mobile app has various modules that are either difficult to automate or can’t be automated like Captcha, OTP etc. Hence, knocking out the Manual Testing Services is not a feasible solution which further makes this as a mandatory part of Software Testing.

2. Testing Is Easy And Can Be Done By Anyone: This made me laugh. People who say so, might think that testing is just a random interaction with an application daily. The job of a tester is actually to think out of the box and create edge cases based on the context of an application. The tester must have an ability to think and test according to the user 's perspective. The tester should not only be skilled for monkey testing but also exploratory testing.

3. Testing Is Monotonous And Needs No Creativity: Testers who are not doing the testing job in the right way may think that testing is boring and doesn’t provide creative opportunities. Apart from the testing of a product, it genuinely requires analysis, observation and exploration of various components surrounding your application. Developers are more aware of the component that they have developed, however, the tester role is to test the whole application as a single product, and hence, he/she should be more creative in writing test cases. Working on edge cases makes testing more challenging and thrilling.

4. Tested Software Is Defect Less: Have you ever faced a bug in an application of companies having a high turnover like Amazon app, Facebook app, WhatsApp, Gmail, LinkedIn etc? Don’t you think that they might have also hired testers for testing such widely used apps? Yes, of course, these apps are tested daily in different development centers too in different ways. After such rigorous testing, testers cannot commit that the application tested is bug free. There is no such term “A Bug Free Software”. Bugs can be minimized by rigorous testing however it is always difficult to claim that the delivered software is defect less. Testing always proves the presence of defects but never shows its absence.

5. Only Testers Are Responsible For Product Quality: Though the testers are the part of the QA team that doesn’t mean that testers are the only ones who are solely responsible for maintaining the quality of the product. Building the product quality from scratch is the responsibility of the entire department. Always remember testing is a never ending process and always have a scope for enhancement. The stakeholders, product managers or business analysts have a high responsibility to take care of the bugs reported by the tester and to ensure that the good quality product is delivered from their end.

6. Testing Should Be Done Once The Product Is Fully Developed: I find this highly considerable myth and a product spoiler statement. Testing does come in an early staging process. The product is supposed to be tested even after a small deployment. This is the only reason we have regression testing. Ideally, the best practice I have experienced in my testing career is to bring testing and development processes in parallel. In this way, bugs are detected and fixed much earlier otherwise clusters of bugs are created which becomes a hassle for the development team to get those fixed.

7. Manual Testing Has No Career Growth: Many people think that manual testers don't get growth opportunities, don’t get fame, don't get highly paid and hence have no career growth. The growth opportunities and fame depend on the employer's work culture on how they value their workers. Coming to the point that testers are not highly paid, if this is being pointed to someone, then he/she may look for a better opportunity with a better package in the market. Testers have a huge dependency on their shoulder. The product team is always incomplete without testers. The testers must have a good knowledge of their domain to get further opportunities. 

Software Testing Facts

1. Testers Play A Vital Role Between Business Management And Development Teams: Testers work closely with developers and product management teams. Depending on organization to organization, the tester can get testing requirements either from the development team or product management team. And they might have to deliver the testing results/reports either to the development team or product management team. And it is not necessary to report results to the same team from which they are getting the requirements from, they can either report to both the teams as well. The product managers are actually aware of bugs reported so that they can manage the sprints accordingly.

2. The Best Software Testing Practices Include both Manual and Automation Testing: I would like to highlight here one more sub-fact the product testing can’t be fully dependent on automation test cases. It is necessary to give a human touch to an application and testing an application according to the user perspective. Though automation saves a lot of time, however, consistency must be maintained between manual and automation testing.

3. Exhaustive Testing Is Impossible: The major principle or fact of Software Testing is that exhaustive testing is not possible. Since every module or component has multiple valid and invalid test cases, it becomes impossible to test against every valid and invalid input. Many systems even have design issues that make the testing process so complex. It is also not possible to create multiple environments in which an application can work. Examples of such applications can be a weather app, pressure apps.

4. Testing Is Context-Dependent: Another obvious principle, software testing is context-dependent. Different techniques, methods, and procedures are used for testing which depends on the type of application that is under test. We have different technologies and tools to test different types of applications. Software is not comparable to other software. For example, methods and ways used to perform testing for e-commerce applications would be different as compared to banking applications.

Conclusion

Every context has misconceptions, hence Software Testing also has. But do not get stuck with such myths. These are just for external knowledge that other people think about Software Testing. So, be positive, believe in facts and principles of testing. Boost up your knowledge in your domain as well as other variants of testing and you guys would have a bright future ahead. Good Luck & Happy Testing!!!!