Why is Software Testing Important?

Testing is important because software bugs could be expensive or even

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

● In April 2015, Bloomberg terminal in London crashed due to software

glitch affected more than 300,000 traders on financial markets. It forced
the government to postpone a 3bn pound debt sale.
● Nissan cars have to recall over 1 million cars from the market due to
software failure in the airbag sensory detectors. There has been
reported two accident due to this software failure.
● Starbucks was forced to close about 60 percent of stores in the U.S and
Canada due to software failure in its POS system. At one point store
served coffee for free as they unable to process the transaction.
● Some of the Amazon’s third party retailers saw their product price is
reduced to 1p due to a software glitch. They were left with heavy losses.
● Vulnerability in Window 10. This bug enables users to escape from
security sandboxes through a flaw in the win32k system.
● In 2015 fighter plane F-35 fell victim to a software bug, making it unable
to detect targets correctly.
● China Airlines Airbus A300 crashed due to a software bug on April 26,
1994, killing 264 innocent live
● 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.
echnical Skills
This list is long, so please bear with us

○ Basic knowledge of Database/ SQL: ​Software Systems have a

large amount of data in the background. This data is stored in
different types of databases like Oracle, MySQL, etc. in the
backend. So, there will be situations when this data needs to be
validated. In that case, simple/complex ​SQL​ queries can be used
to check whether proper data is stored in the backend databases.
○ Basic knowledge of Linux commands:​ Most of the software
applications like Web-Services, Databases, Application Servers
are deployed on Linux machines.So it is crucial for testers to have
knowledge about ​Linux commands​.
○ Knowledge and hands-on experience of a Test Management
Tool:​Test Management​ is an important aspect of Software
testing. Without proper test management techniques, software
testing process will fail. Test management is nothing but
managing your testing related artifacts.
For example - A tool like ​Testlink​ can be used for tracking all the
test cases written by your team.
There are other tools available that can be utilized for Test
Management. So, it is important to have knowledge and working
experience of such tools because they are used in most of the
companies.
○ Knowledge and hands-on experience of any Defect Tracking
tool- ​Defect Tracking and ​Defect life cycle​ are key aspects of
software testing. It is extremely critical to managing defects
properly and track them in a systematic manner. Defect tracking
becomes necessary because the entire team should know about
the defect including managers, developers, and testers. Several
tools are used to lock defects including ​QC​, ​Bugzilla​, ​Jira​, etc.
○ Knowledge and hands-on experience of Automation tool:​ If
you see yourself as an "Automation tester" after a couple of years
 working on manual testing, then you must master a tool and get
in-depth, hands-on knowledge of automation tools.
Note​ - Only knowledge of any Automation tool is not sufficient to
crack the interview, you must have good hands-on experience, so
practice the tool of your choice to achieve mastery. Knowledge of
any scripting language like VBScript, ​JavaScript​, ​C#​ is always
helpful as a tester if you are looking for a job into automation. Few
companies also use Shell/​Perl​ scripting, and there is a lot of
demand for testers having knowledge of the same. Again, it will
depend on the company and which tools are used by that
company.

There is also a lot of scope for ​performance testing​ tools because applications
need to be tested for their performance which is a part of non-functional
testing.

That's it to technical knowledge. Please note you do not need ALL the
technical skills listed above. The technical skill sets required vary with the Job
Role and company processes.

Academic Background
Academic background of a software tester should be in Computer Science.

A BTech/ B.E., MCA, BCA, BSc- Computers, will land you a job quickly.

If you do not hold any of these degrees, then you must complete a software
testing certification like ​ISTQB​ and ​CSTE​ which help you learn Software
Development/ Test Life Cycle and other testing methodologies.

Remuneration
Compensation of a software tester varies from company to company. Average
salary range of a software tester in the US is $45,993 - $74,935. Average
salary range of a software tester in India is Rs 247,315 - Rs 449,111.
Also, a software tester is also given health insurance, bonuses, gratuity and
other perks.

What Does a Software Tester do?

On any typical work day, you will be busy understanding requirement
documents, creating test cases, executing test cases, reporting and re-testing
bugs, attending review meetings and other team building activities.

Software Tester Career Path

Your career progression as a software tester (QA Analyst) in typical CMMI
level 5 company will look like following but will vary from company to company

1. QA Analyst (Fresher)
2. Sr. QA Analyst (2-3 years' experience)
3. QA Team Coordinator (5-6 years' experience)
4. Test Manager (8-11 years' experience)
5. Senior Test Manager (14+ experience)

Alternate Career Tracks as a Software Tester

Once you have got your hand dirty in manual testing, you can pursue
following specializations

● Automation Testing​: As an Automation Test Engineer, you will be

responsible for automating manual test case execution which otherwise
could be time-consuming. Tools used IBM Rational Robot, Silk
performer, and QTP
● Performance Testing:​ As a performance test engineer, you will be
responsible for checking application responsiveness (time is taken to
load, maximum load application can handle), etc. Tools used WEBLoad,
Loadrunner.
● Business Analyst​: A major advantages Testers have over Developers
is that they have an end to end business knowledge. An obvious career
progression for testers is to become a Business Analyst. As a ​Business
 Analyst​, you will be responsible for analyzing and assessing your
company's business model and workflows. As a BA, you will intergrate
these models and workflows with technology.

Common Myths
Software Testing as a Career pays Less Developers are more respected as
compared to Testers

Contrary to popular belief, Software Testers (better known as QA

professionals) are paid and treated at par with Software Developers in all
"aspiring" companies. A career in Software Testing should never be
considered as "second rated."

Software Testing is Boring

Software Testing could actually "test" your nerves since you need to make
sense of Business Requirements and draft test cases based on your
understanding. Software testing is not boring. What is boring is doing the
same set of tasks repeatedly. The key is to try new things. For that matter,
have you ever spoken to a software developer with more than 3 years'
experience? He will tell you how boring his job has become off-lately.

How to Become Software Tester

For a complete newbie, here is our suggested approach to learning Software
Testing
You start with learning Basic principles of Software Testing. Once done you
apply for freelancing jobs. This will help you gain practical knowledge
and will fortify the testing concepts you have learned.

Next, you proceed to Selenium - Automation tool, then JMeter - Performance

Testing tool and finally TestLink - Test Management Tool. All the while you
are learning, we suggest you apply for freelancing jobs (apart from other
benefits you will make some moolah too!).

Once you are through with all the tools, you may consider taking a
certification. We recommend ISTQB. However, this is optional.

Certification Exams:
ISTQB Foundation level is the basic certification in Testing field.

It is not mandatory, but it will help increase your chances of getting the job.
Most of the companies have this criterion.
A software tester with ISTQB cleared will be given more priority as compared
to others.

After this, when you apply for permanent jobs in big corporations you will have
many skills to offer as well some practical freelancing experience which may
be of value and will increase your chances of being selected.

You can also pursue certification in a Testing tool of your choice.

Learning Guides: -

● Software Testing Tutorials - ​link

● Selenium - ​link​ As an alternative you can also learn​ QTP
● Jmeter - ​link​ As an alternative you can also learn​ Loadrunner
● Testlink - ​link​ As an alternative you can also learn ​Quality Center
● Freelancing Jobs – ​UpWork​ or ​Freelancer
● Permanent Jobs - Any major job portal like monster.com or naukri.com

Hope to see you at a QA conference some Day! :-)

Here is a tool to help you make a career choice

Background

It is important that you achieve optimum test results while conducting software
testing without deviating from the goal. But how you determine that you are
following the right strategy for testing? For that, you need to stick to some
basic testing principles. Here are the common seven testing principles that are
widely practiced in the software industry.

To understand this, consider a scenario where you are moving a file from
folder A to Folder B.

Think of all the possible ways you can test this.

Apart from the usual scenarios, you can also test the following conditions

● Trying to move the file when it is Open

● You do not have the security rights to paste the file in Folder B
● Folder B is on a shared drive and storage capacity is full.
● Folder B already has a file with the same name, in fact, the list is
endless
● Or suppose you have 15 input fields to test, each having 5 possible
values, the number of combinations to be tested would be 5^15

If you were to test the entire possible combinations project EXECUTION TIME
& COSTS would rise exponentially. We need certain principles and strategies
to optimize the testing effort

Here are the 7 Principles:

1) Exhaustive testing is not possible

Yes! Exhaustive testing is not possible. Instead, we need the optimal amount
of testing based on the risk assessment of the application.

And the million dollar question is, how do you determine this risk?

To answer this let's do an exercise

In your opinion, Which operation is most likely to cause your Operating

system to fail?

I am sure most of you would have guessed, Opening 10 different application

all at the same time.
So if you were testing this Operating system, you would realize that defects
are likely to be found in multi-tasking activity and need to be tested thoroughly
which brings us to our next principle​ Defect ​Clustering

2) Defect Clustering
Defect Clustering which states that a small number of modules contain most
of the defects detected. This is the application of the Pareto Principle to
software testing: approximately 80% of the problems are found in 20% of the
modules.

By experience, you can identify such risky modules. But this approach has its
own problems

If the same tests are repeated over and over again, eventually the same test
cases will no longer find new bugs.

3) Pesticide Paradox
Repetitive use of the same pesticide mix to eradicate insects during farming
will over time lead to the insects developing resistance to the pesticide
Thereby ineffective of pesticides on insects. The same applies to software
testing. If the same set of repetitive tests are conducted, the method will be
useless for discovering new defects.

To overcome this, the test cases need to be regularly reviewed & revised,
adding new & different test cases to help find more defects.

Testers cannot simply depend on existing test techniques. He must look out
continually to improve the existing methods to make testing more effective.
But even after all this sweat & hard work in testing, you can never claim your
product is bug-free. To drive home this point, let's see this video of the public
launch of Windows 98
You think a company like MICROSOFT would not have tested their OS
thoroughly & would risk their reputation just to see their OS crashing during its
public launch!

4) Testing shows a presence of defects

Hence, testing principle states that - Testing talks about the presence of
defects and don’t talk about the absence of defects. i.e. Software Testing
reduces the probability of undiscovered defects remaining in the software but
even if no defects are found, it is not a proof of correctness.

But what if, you work extra hard, taking all precautions & make your software
product 99% bug-free. And the software does not meet the needs &
requirements of the clients.

This leads us to our next principle, which states that- Absence of Error