Avoid Anarchy in Software Testing and QA

In some organizations software testing is given the right amount of management support, qualified staff, and test automation tools to ensure a high level of software quality. However, sometimes the nature of software testing can best be described as anarchy. Read why…

Testing Takes Up to 40% of the Development Time
As competition grows, it becomes increasingly more important to deliver software faster, so IT departments are constantly looking for ways to cut down the application time to market. Since software testing takes up to 40% of the development cycle, it is tempting to save some time by reducing the amount of testing. But how does this impact the quality of the software being delivered?

With the overall goal for QA being to deliver top quality applications, adequate backing from the superiors to test thoroughly and automation tools that work are a must. Otherwise frustration may lead to anarchy in the software test and QA departments.

How much is affected by poor software quality?
Application quality is important for the entire organization. It is a must to avoid critical errors being missed because this can cause a whole chain of problems to occur.
 
If a live application fails, this typically involves the following steps:

• Users are unable to process business transactions
• The failing application(s) must be identified, corrected and re-tested
• If data corruption has occurred then the extent of this has to be analyzed
• If multiple errors occur, the users start losing confidence

Six years ago, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US estimated that software errors cost the US economy $59.5 billion annually!! This is how serious insufficient software quality is.

A recent IDC survey revealed that more than 40% of all software applications are released with 1-10 critical defects. Most surprisingly, management is often aware of this and still approves the applications to go live!
 
Do you want to read more about how insufficient software testing leads to anarchy in QA, click here.

Test solutions from Original Software have revolutionized software testing
The TestBench products from Original Software belong to a new generation of software automation tools. All the solutions are based upon the user's interaction with the system under test. This implies that the TestBench products eliminate the dependency on coding and programmers to perform software tests.

This technology also implies that the solutions automatically recognize when an application interface has changes and the scripts are updated to reflect the changes. As a result, the software tests are re-usable, no matter how often software changes are applied. Intelligent reports with “report compare” features highlight the differences making it easy for the tester to either approve the changes and thus get updated scripts, or to pinpoint an error.

Data models can be made to ensure a proper quality of the software tests, as poor data always lead to poor test results. The fact that every step along the way is captured makes automatic documentation a possibility. This saves numerous hours.

More than 400 organizations in 25 different countries have implemented components of the TestBench product suite over the past ten years.

Want to know more about the TestBench products for software test automation? Click here.