Software Testing is always looked at in a different way by the diverse companies that depend on websites, web applications, and enterprise applications for business operations in today’s rapidly changing technology landscape. These companies still see software testing as a mysterious thing which involves a lot of factors that are hard to understand, why and when they need to have domain expert test engineers, advanced testing tools with relevant infrastructure and more importantly the difficulty in identifying the priorities of testing.
Some common myths of software testing are that testing is time-consuming, it is expensive, it is tedious, testers are responsible for the decreased quality of application, testing in agile environment is completely ad-hoc etc.
Companies that are about to start testing their applications or are considering outsourcing their testing activities would come across a lot of aspects which keep hitting their minds all the time. Companies that do not have much knowledge about software testing would be completely perplexed. It is quite difficult to have all the right things in place at the right time. Some people think it is extremely boring at times when the possibility of being creative with their work is extremely limited. This could happen when the project is very small with a couple of functions and few user input fields. The boring work is such projects will not last long but it would be great if the work gets exciting. However, if an application is a large one with a lot of functions and features, it would be quite interesting and challenging to test. It requires applying creativity to be productive.
Testing Too Expensive
There are software testing stories that could amaze one with frequency of certain misconceptions like that testing is too expensive but in reality, you pay less for testing during software development and pay more for finding issues later. Introducing testing in the early stages would help in saving both time and cost. Some companies think that testing is time-consuming but it is not at all time consuming when it is introduced during the SDLC phases. Testing and identifying bugs throughout SDLC is a productive affair.
Some clients, project managers, and the management team think that a tester’s only job is to identify bugs. If any bugs are missed, the testers would be accountable for the decreased quality of an application. In reality, there is no guarantee that a software application is completely bug-free even though it is tested by the most advanced testing team. With an increasing demand for Automation Testing, people started thinking that it can be used anywhere during software development but the truth is that it can help in reducing the testing time but it cannot be implemented any time we want. It can be implemented only when the software has been manually tested and is stable to some extent.
Automation End The Need For Manual Testing
Another misconception is that automation can eliminate the need for manual testing. Undoubtedly, there is no replacement for manual testing, because automation testing completely relies on manual test plans only. Automation testing is performed only when tests are repetitive and time-consuming. A better test coverage can be achieved by using a combination of manual and automated testing. There are increasing myths around Testing in Agile environment. Since agile development methodologies has been a point of focus for many organizations, testing in agile environments has gained importance. Some of the very common myths are that the Testing in Agile is ad hoc, it is undocumented, and it does not have defined strategies. In reality, an agile environment involves planning sprints, budget and resources ahead of time. It collaborates testers and developers to achieve improved quality and faster time to market at reduced costs. However, testing has moved on. We are living in an era of frequently changing technology trends. Testing cannot be ignored. We should be focusing on the increasing complexity of applications and how we can test them effectively and efficiently.
