What is software testing?

Since I’ve become a software tester I’ve been asked over and over again:

What do you actually do? What is a software testing? What do testers do?

The answer has never been obvious and easy for me and it always depended on external circumstances like - who asked and why?

Well, some people are simply curious, others really have no idea about this whole software testing thing and also certain people will want to know the answer to test your knowledge regarding the subject.

Yes, I meant a job interview. Let’s begin from that approach as this will be probably the first time in your life when you will be asked about the official definition of software testing.

According to the brand new 2018 ISTQB Foundation Level Syllabus:

Software testing is a way to assess the quality of the software and to reduce the risk of software failure in operation.

The test process includes activities such as test planning, analyzing, designing, and implementing tests,reporting test progress and results, and evaluating the quality of a test object.

On a interview you will surely stand out when add some examples of testing objectives like:

• evaluating work products, e.g. user stories
• verifying if all requirements are fulfilled
• preventing defects
• helping with making business decisions
• reducing the level of risk of inadequate software quality

It really depends on the interviewer how deep they will dig into this topic asking you more in detail. Anyway you should be prepared.

Moving forward...just not so long ago I’ve had a OSH training. Our trainer asked me what my area of work was and I said that I worked in IT. He assumed I was a developer but I quickly cleared out that I am a tester - not developer. Fair enough - he answered - so what do you exactly do?

What does a manual tester do?

I depends. As always. On many factors. But still - there are certain number of activities that often occur in this job.

Executing tests

Testers execute manually test cases - it means that they have a ready scenario with described steps to follow (of course they might also prepare such scenario by themselves - it depends). Testers compare expected results with the real ones. If there is any difference then it has to be reported.

At the beginning of testing career you will definitely execute regression tests, retests or maybe even new functionalities of the application.
Reporting

Raptors - in other words documentation and the consequence of executed tests - may include e.g. reported defects in the testing management tool like Rally, HP ALM or TestLink (free of charge!). When you become a QA Leader you might be asked to draw up more kinds of reports - like the statistics and information about test execution status for business and clients.

Analysis, designing and testing implementation

As a more experienced tester you will analyse tests requirements and foundation, you will be defining data and testing environment.

The more working experience you have the more responsibilities you will have. And that’s good news! You can develop your skills towards testing automation, which for me personally it’s the natural way of tester’s development. But first you should gain hands-on experience in manual testing as automation testing is not only writing code but also designing test scenarios and knowledge in which cases we can automate tests.

A perfect definition

Apart from all available and official definitions of testing all QA and testing professionals should discover their definition on their own according to their experience and reflexions based on it.

There’s a popular quote by James Bach going around Internet:

Testing is an infinite process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous in order to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous.

Sounds intriguing and before starting my first job I was convinced about the legitimacy of this sentence, but later when I started working as a tester I realised that in reality testing is not infinite, we know more or less what to compare and we can in many cases predict what might happen if something goes wrong. What’s more we can assume who will be recipient of our application.

I started my own search for my testing definition and what I’ve liked to most so far is the quotation by Burt Rutan:

Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.