No matter how efficient your software development team is, humans are bound to make mistakes, impacting your application release cycle.

You might wonder how leading software development organisations deliver quality-controlled applications without functional or non-functional defects.

For some enterprises, software release success depends on the regularity of outcomes with expected results. However, before achieving their goals, almost every company faces the consequences of human error.

In today’s world of advanced technology, software testing is critical to a seamless release management software environment.

With testing, you can improve the software’s reliability and release high-quality applications. Moreover, software testing enables organisations to define their test environment, build test cases, create scripts, analyse test results, and submit defect reports.

Going through this article, you can learn the basics of software testing.

Table of Contents

What is Software Testing?

Software testing involves evaluating and verifying the application’s functionality to determine whether the developed product matches its pre-defined requirements.

The primary purpose of testing software is to identify the defects, missing needs, and gaps and ensure that the end product is free of human errors.

Testing is the penultimate step conducted before launching the software to the market. The release management software environment should include examining, analysing, observing, and evaluating different aspects of the application to deliver high-quality, error-free products.

Usually, professional software testers use various manual and automated tests and deliver results to the development team. The end goal of testing software applications is to provide quality products to the users.

What is the Significance of Software Testing?

Some enterprises refrain from testing software due to limited budget, thinking it doesn’t have significant consequences.

However, testing software applications is an indispensable step to save your company’s reputation for delivering defective products.

The below-discussed is the importance of software testing:

Enhanced product quality

A company can only bring value to its customers by delivering an ideal product. To achieve this goal, enterprises must ensure that their end users don’t face any issues when using their software applications. The best solution to do this is by developing a bug-free, high-quality product.

Software development teams must test the developed applications and fix the bugs identified during testing before releasing the products.

Software testing allows the team to resolve identified issues before the product reaches the customers, increasing the quality of the deliverables.

Improved software security

When customers use any software application, they are bound to provide the product with some sort of personal information.

Testers must test data for software security before releasing the product to prevent hackers from accessing your customers’ data. An organisation following a proper software testing process can ensure a secure product that makes end users feel safe using the application.

Evaluate compatibility with different platforms and devices

Gone are the days when customers used to work exclusively on desktops. In a mobile-first age, it’s a must for companies to test the product’s device compatibility.

For example, when developing a website, the tester must test whether the website is compatible enough to run on different device resolutions and browsers.

Cost efficiency

Cost efficiency is among many other perks of software testing. Testing your software for different functionalities, features, compatibility, and other vital aspects ensures quality and saves money in the long run.

Moreover, if you successfully identify the bugs in the early software development stages, fixing them will cost much less.

Customer satisfaction

The ultimate goal of any software development company is customer satisfaction. Product owners can give the expected best user experience by testing software applications

Additionally, providing the best product to the market with an entrusted client base will produce long-term benefits for your organisation.

What are Different Types of Software Testing?

Based on the nature and scope of the application, you can deploy different types of software testing in the release management software environment.

There are many different testing approaches like White Box, Black Box, and Grey Box testing and different testing levels like Integration, Unit, System, and Acceptance testing. Amidst several types of testing approaches and levels, software testing can be classified as follows:

Manual testing

Manual testing involves the testers executing test scripts and cases manually. No automation tool is used to verify the software quality. Instead, a tester manually performs all the test cases to determine the application’s quality and functionality.

Automated testing

Automated testing involves using automation testing tools to identify bugs, errors, and defects in the product.

With these tools, development teams can check the accuracy and efficiency of a software application in no time, resulting in quick software release.

Software testers can execute test scripts and generate results automatically with automated testing tools like Ranorex, Katalon Studio, Selenium, etc.

Functional testing

Functional testing is performed to verify each function of a software application. The tester tests all the functionalities by providing an accurate input. With functional testing, you can verify whether the output meets the specified requirements.

Below listed are different types of functional testing:

Unit testing allows the tester to check individual components of software.
Integration testing involves testing individual components or modules once combined in a group.
System testing involves executing test cases to verify integrated and completed software compliance.
Smoke testing is conducted to test an application’s simple and basic functionalities.

Non-functional testing

Non-functional testing involves testing an application for several non-functional parameters, such as usability, reliability, compatibility, security, and performance.

This type of software testing primarily aims to determine how well the systems perform under different conditions and how well they respond to a use request.