Importance of software testing

06. April 2016 Blog 0

Software Testing is important because as humans we all make mistakes. To Err is human but some of the mistakes will be expensive or dangerous. In order to avoid or to an extend to reduce the severity of mistakes testing is required.

Usually software testing is treated as one phase of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).Software testing is the process of finding bugs in the software & ensuring a quality delivery. It may also be defined as a process of finding defects in an application and for establishing that the software has attained a specified degree of quality with respect to selected attributes.

The Role of Testing in SDLC is to improve the quality, reliability and performance of the system with all check and make the software bug free. We cannot ensure that 100% testing is done or the product is 100% bug free but the motto is to deliver with maximum quality.

Testing in early phase will help to analyze the defects early and thereby reducing the cost and effort in resolving that in the last critical stage.

Why testing is important?

  • This is China Airlines Airbus A300 crashing due to a software bug on April 26, 1994, killing 264 innocent lives

Software bugs can potentially cause monetary and human loss, history is full of such examples

  • In 1985, Canada’s Therac-25 radiation therapy machine malfunctioned due to software bug and delivered lethal radiation doses to patients, leaving 3 people dead and critically injuring 3 others
  • In April of 1999, a software bug caused the failure of a $1.2 billion military satellite launch, the costliest accident in history
  • In May of 1996, a software bug caused the bank accounts of 823 customers of a major U.S. bank to be credited with 920 million US dollars

As you see, testing is important because software bugs could be expensive or even dangerous

  • As Paul Elrich puts it - “To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”

In conclusion for growth of any business the most important is user satisfaction & proper testing. In order to have proper testing we have to plan it accordingly and execute it. So testing is group of activities that is planned and executed in well-defined steps.