What Testing is What Testing Does

To see all articles of ISTQB-ISEB Foundation guide, see here:

Software Testing-ISTQB ISEB Foundation Guide

In our previous article, we have discussed Keeping Software Under Control

So far we have worked with an intuitive idea of what testing is. We have recognized that it is an activity used to reduce risk and improve quality by finding defects, which is all true. However, we need to understand a little more about how software testing works in practice before we can think about how to implement effective testing.

Testing and Debugging

Testing and debugging are different kinds of activity, both of which are very important. Debugging is the process that developers go through to identify the cause of bugs or defects in code and undertake corrections. Ideally some check of the correction is made, but this may not extend to checking that other areas of the system have not been inadvertently affected by the correction. Testing, on the other hand, is a systematic exploration of a component or system with the main aim of finding and reporting defects. Testing does not include correction of defects—these are passed on to the developer to correct. Testing does, however, ensure that changes and corrections are checked for their effect on other parts of the component or system.

Effective debugging is essential before testing begins to raise the level of quality of the component or system to a level that is worth testing, i.e. a level that is sufficiently robust to enable rigorous testing to be performed. Debugging does not give confidence that the component or system meets its requirements completely. Testing makes a rigorous examination of the behavior of a component or system and reports all defects found for the development team to correct. Testing then repeats enough tests to ensure that defect corrections have been effective. So both are needed to achieve a quality result.

Static Testing and Dynamic Testing

Static testing is the term used for testing where the code is not exercised. This may sound strange, but remember that failures often begin with a human error, namely a mistake in a document such as a specification. We need to test these because errors are much cheaper to fix than defects or failures (as you will see). That is why testing should start as early as possible, another basic principle explained in more detail later in this chapter. Static testing involves techniques such as reviews, which can be effective in preventing defects, e.g. by removing ambiguities and errors from specification documents; this is a topic in its own right. Dynamic testing is the kind that exercises the program under test with some test data, so we speak of test execution in this context. The discipline of software testing encompasses both static and dynamic testing.

Testing as a Process

We have already seen that there is much more to testing than test execution. Before test execution there is some preparatory work to do to design the tests and set them up; after test execution there is some work needed to record the results and check whether the tests are complete. Even more important than this is deciding what we are trying to achieve with the testing and setting clear objectives for each test. A test designed to give confidence that a program functions according to its specification, for example, will be quite different from one designed to find as many defects as possible. We define a test process to ensure that we do not miss critical steps and that we do things in the right order.

Testing as a Set of Techniques

The final challenge is to ensure that the testing we do is effective testing. It might seem paradoxical, but a good test is one that finds a defect if there is one present. A test that finds no defect has consumed resources but added no value; a test that finds a defect has created an opportunity to improve the quality of the product. How do we design tests that find defects? We actually do two things to maximize the effectiveness of the tests. techniques are all based on certain testing principles that have been discovered and documented over the years, and these principles are the second mechanism we use to ensure that tests are effective. Even when we cannot apply rigorous test design for some reason (such as time pressures) we can still apply the general principles to guide our testing.

To check your understanding, I would again like to ask you some questions:

Describe static testing and dynamic testing.
What is debugging?
What other elements apart from ‘test execution’ are included in ‘testing’?

You may follow the complete series of Fundamentals of Testing articles here:

Why a Software Fails?
Keeping Software Test Under Control
What Testing is and What Testing Does
Software Testing Principles
Fundamental Software Test Processes
Psychology of Software Testing
Testers Code of Ethics
ISTQB Sample Questions

To see all articles of ISTQB-ISEB Foundation guide, see here:

Software Testing-ISTQB ISEB Foundation Guide