It is often said that Software Testing is both a discipline and a process. It is a different discipline from software development even when it is a subset of the entire development process. Software testing is an iterative process of validating the functionality with the intent of discovering loopholes in the software.In order to acheive the same,an efficient software tester should understand both the business (read as requirements) and be technically savvy.
Security is a key area to be tested.
The data integrity has to be maintained by making sure the changes if any are legitimate. Confidentiality,User privacy and Data Availability also has to be ensured.
The iterative process also tests intensively for functionality, performance, scalability, stress under extreme conditions and user friendliness. We do conduct compatibility and forced error testing. Some of the above can have specific failure conditionality whereas certain test results can be just an observation.An example for the latter is performance testing for responsiveness to users.
Standout also provides documented Test Plans, Test Cases and Test Results at the Unit, Integration and System level so that our clients can make appropriate decision(s) based on the results.
We also realize that we cannot automate all testing and do give emphasis to manual testing as well. We do feel ad hoc testing where testers just follow their instinct and try to elicit variations from requirements in the code, still has a lot of relevance. Also we do not think any tool can automate and judge properly what user friendliness is. But whether the testing be manual or automated, we make sure that the client is kept updated about every aspect of testing so that the surprise element is eliminated.
While software testing is a process, Quality assurance is the end result or an event. Our extensive testing makes sure that the quality of the software product that underwent the process is assured.
