Excellent, one of your test cases has failed, and you have exposed a defect in the application that needs to be corrected ASAP. Time to raise a bug report for the developers to action.

But before you load up your bug tracking software and hit that Create New Issue button. Ask yourself… is this a bug? And how can you best highlight this so it gets the attention it deserves by the development team? 

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Software testing is not just a formality that your product ought to go through before it is released to the public. It instead should be thought of as an invaluable part of your development process that can prevent you from releasing a piece of software that is not fit for the use by the end-user. But how does a tester perform testing? Where do they start?

This is where the Software Testing Life Cycle (or STLC) comes in. This is an established step-by-step process that guides you through the core approach to your test projects. Promoting consistency, each stage of the process has been planned to safeguard the quality of your product and boost test effectiveness,

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Another piece in the ‘box method’ of software testing. This time we will be looking at white-box testing, which is also known as structural, clear-box, or glass-box testing to name a few of its aliases.

The name is derived from the concept that the tester can see through the box to the internal workings of the software, which of course is opposite to black-box testing which is purely functional and only deals with the inputs and outputs of the application.

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If I ask you to verify something on a project for me. What would your instincts be?

And if I asked you to verify that same item. Would you think I was talking about the same thing, or asking a different request?

Don’t worry if you’re a little confused at the moment. These terms often get misunderstood when it comes to software testing but they mean two separate and very different procedures that serve complementary, but very separate purposes.

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In this blog post, I will go over the black-box method of software testing. Often referred to as specification-based testing. This software testing method can be applied as soon as the user requirements are formed, allowing for testing activities to begin as early in development as possible.

But what is black-box testing? What sort of tests can the method be used in? And why are we using a box to perform software testing?

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Testing documentation (or artifacts) are of huge importance to any successful testing effort. Not only do they fulfil the requirement of having a written account of your overall testing process for future reference. But in the instance of test cases, they will provide you with steps for future reference, thus making them available for additional members of your team to execute, or in the case of a well-written test case, reuse in future testing.

But what makes a good test case? And how do you write one in such a way that anyone can understand and follow?

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In short, software testing is the art of torturing programs until they reveal their defects.

Kidding.

In my opinion, software testing has many MANY different definitions depending on who you speak to and the level of software testing you are trying to encapsulate in your response.

In the first of a series of blog posts on this topic. I want to break down the various areas of software testing for you so that can impress your friends at the next pub quiz when you inevitably get asked.

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Time has evolved since the dawn of software testing and giant leaps have been made in the techniques employed and the technologies utilised to prevent defects in the software that we use every day.

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It was New Years Day 2018.

With the new year comes with a sense that we all should do something that we’ve always felt an urge to start, but because we didn’t know how, or thought the idea of it alone sounded like it was something that we should do, we just never really got around to it before.

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