In the world of software development, software testing and quality assurance (QA) are crucial processes that ensure software meets its performance and usability standards. These processes can even help define what those standards should be.
The practice of testing and QA has been a part of software development for a while. However, in the last ten years, the acceleration in the pace and complexity of software delivery, along with higher expectations for software quality from users, has brought significant changes to how many projects handle software testing.
Here’s an exploration of how testing and QA work in today’s context, along with some key strategies for optimizing testing and the central methodologies driving modern software testing practices.
How Do Testing and Quality Assurance Work?
There are various ways to integrate software quality testing and QA into a software project. The overarching goal of contemporary software testing and QA is to ensure a consistent and systematic process for assessing whether the software meets quality standards throughout its development lifecycle.
In smaller projects, developers often conduct software tests themselves. For larger projects or organizations, a dedicated QA team usually takes charge of designing, executing, and evaluating tests.
The Role of Test Automation
While engineers used to manually run most software tests by reviewing code or exploring applications, this approach is time-consuming and impractical for large-scale operations. Manual testing becomes challenging when code is being updated frequently. It’s also not feasible to manually test against a large user base.
This is why the majority of software tests today are automated. Using specialized frameworks like Selenium or Cucumber, engineers create tests that assess application code or functionality. These tests can be automatically executed, often in parallel, enabling a high volume of tests to be completed in a short time. This automation empowers development teams to write and revise code swiftly without compromising on software quality.
In an era where software updates are frequent, software testing automation is pivotal in ensuring that QA processes keep pace with the overall software development lifecycle.
‘Shift-Left’ and ‘Shift-Right’ Testing
A significant shift in the past decade involves the adoption of “shift-left” and “shift-right” testing methodologies.
Shift-left testing emphasizes running tests as early as possible in the software development process. The goal is to detect quality issues promptly, which leads to faster and simpler issue resolution. Catching problems at an early stage prevents them from affecting other parts of the application that might depend on the flawed section.
On the other hand, shift-right testing enhances the capacity to identify quality issues that slipped past earlier tests. By running tests on applications deployed in production, shift-right testing complements monitoring efforts, providing an additional way to discover quality problems impacting end users.
Benefits of Testing and QA
Embracing testing and QA offers several benefits. Effective testing significantly reduces the risk of introducing software quality problems into production environments. Additionally, software testing and QA enable developers to work swiftly while relying on testing to catch issues that might have been overlooked during programming.
These practices also contribute to shaping the definition of software quality for a particular application. Usability and acceptance tests gather user feedback, informing the tests the development team conducts and what aspects they evaluate.
Moreover, modern testing and QA techniques centered around test automation help developers work efficiently at scale. With the ability to run hundreds of tests automatically, development teams can continuously update applications without worrying about testing causing delays in release schedules.
Drawbacks of Testing
While there are many benefits, improper planning and implementation of testing can have drawbacks. Poorly designed tests can consume resources without providing meaningful insights. Slow test execution might delay deploying updates. Inadequate test coverage might not accurately reflect end-user experiences. However, these issues can be addressed with proper planning and execution of testing strategies.
In essence, having a well-structured software testing and quality assurance strategy is essential, as it minimizes risks and enhances software quality. The real risk lies in not systematically testing software at all, rather than the way teams approach testing.
Conclusion
No matter which type of application a team develops or how large and complex the application is, testing and quality assurance play a key role in ensuring that the application does what it needs to do. There are many types of tests you can run, and multiple test automation frameworks are available to help execute the tests quickly. But no matter which approach you take, the key is to ensure that you have a consistent, systematic testing routine in place in order to minimize the risk of deploying bad software to your users.
