Quality Assurance: Software Testing

Introduction

Software testing is the procedure of assessing and confirming that the software application satisfies all of the established requirements and finds bugs to produce a high-quality result. Every project needs testing, which may be categorised into three basic categories: automation testing, manual testing, and unit testing. As a matter of quality assurance, you battle daily to test websites and software before and after deployment. 

We hope that this comparison of automated, manual, and unit testing will make it easier for you to choose which to utilize. The current tendency is toward automation, and this trend extends to software and internet testing as well. These testing have advantages and disadvantages, but it’s crucial to recognize how they differ from one another. As a result, we will talk about the traits and uses of these three testing types in this article.

1. What are the different types of software testing: automation, manual, and unit testing?

1.1. What is automation testing? 

A test case suite is executed using specialized automated testing software tools as part of the software testing technique known as automation testing. A human performing manual testing while sitting in front of a computer methodically completes the test steps.

Additionally, the automation testing software may generate thorough test reports, compare expected and actual findings, and enter test data into the System Under Test. Software test automation necessitates significant financial and material inputs.

Repeated execution of the same test suite will be necessary during subsequent development cycles. This test suite can be recorded and replayed as needed using a test automation tool. No further human involvement is needed once the test suite has been automated. This increased Test Automation ROI. Automation’s objective is to minimize the number of test cases that must be run manually, not to completely replace manual testing.

1.2. What is Manual testing?

An automated tool is not used during the manual testing process, which involves manually running test cases. According to the viewpoint of the end user, the tester manually completed all test cases. It confirms whether or not the application functions as specified in the requirement document. Planning and execution of test cases allow for nearly complete software application completion. Additionally, test case reports are manually created.

One of the most essential testing techniques is manual testing since it can identify both obvious and subtle software flaws. A fault is defined as the discrepancy between the output that was anticipated and the output that the software produced. After the developer repaired the flaws, the tester received the product to retest.

Before any freshly developed software is subjected to automated testing, manual testing is required. Although it takes a lot of time and work, this testing ensures that the programmer is bug-free. However, knowledge of any automated testing technology is not necessary for manual testing. Because “100% automation is not achievable,” one of the tenets of software testing, manual testing is crucial.

1.3. What is Unit testing?

Each unit or an individual component of the software application is tested as part of the unit testing process. It represents the initial stage of functional testing. The purpose of unit testing is to confirm the functionality of individual unit components. A unit is a single testable component that may be tested as part of the application software development process. 

Unit testing is used to ensure that isolated code is correct. A specific application function or piece of code is referred to as a unit component. Unit testing is typically conducted using the white box testing methodology by developers. When the application is finished and submitted to the test engineer, the test engineer will begin independently or one-by-one testing each component of the module or module of the application. This procedure is referred to as unit testing or components testing.

2. Significance of software testing: Automated vs Manual testing vs Unit testing

2.1. Why Automated Testing is necessary?

The best technique to improve software testing effectiveness, test coverage, and execution speed is through test automation. The following justifies the significance of automated software testing: 

• Manual Testing of every workflow, area, and adverse situation costs time and money. 

• Manually checking for multilingual websites is challenging. 

• Software testing test automation eliminates the need for human intervention. Where we see automated testing is possible (overnight). 

• The speed of test execution is accelerated via test automation. 

• Automation improves test coverage. 

• Manual Testing might become monotonous and erroneous.

2.2. Why Manual Testing is necessary?

Whenever a brand-new programme hits the market, is unreliable, has bugs, causes troubles, or negatively affects users. If we don’t want to run into issues like this, we should run the application through one round of testing to make it stable and bug-free before delivering it to the client. If the application is bug-free, the end user will find it easier to use.

The test engineer may test the application from the standpoint of the end-user and become more familiar with the product if they conduct manual testing. This allows them to design accurate test cases for the application and provide timely feedback on it.

2.3. Why Unit Testing is necessary?

Unit testing is the first level of testing carried out before integration, and further levels of testing in a testing level hierarchy. It employs modules for testing, reducing the reliance on waiting for Unit testing aided by the usage of stubs, drivers, dummy objects, and unit testing frameworks.

The software is typically tested at four levels: unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and acceptance testing. However, due to time constraints, software testers occasionally skip unit testing, which can result in higher defects during integration testing, system testing, acceptance testing, or even beta testing, which happens after a software application is finished.

3. Pros and Cons of Automated Software Testing

3.1. Pros of Automated Software Testing 

• Auto testers are the Fast and Furious crew of testing, as was already mentioned. In the time it takes a human tester to use the restroom, an auto tester may run millions of tests. Speed and agility together enable superhuman levels of multitasking. 

• Even though a robot tester may not be as intelligent as a human tester, the robot outperforms humans in terms of error-free testing. A COVID-19 vehicle tester is unconcerned, and it also doesn’t care about politics or the news. They are dependable in environments that rely on code and scripts as a result of all of this.

• Without making a mistake, an auto-tester can compare millions of lines of conversion data. And an auto tester discovers more bugs than a human tester because of this incredible level of accuracy. 

• When tests are repeated over a longer period, auto testers are incredibly useful. With an auto-tester, your team may repeatedly execute the same test while utilizing different datasets. For instance, an auto-tester can execute almost endless regression testing installations or sessions. For projects where human reasoning and midcourse modifications are not required, automated testing may be the best option.

3.2. Cons of Automated Software Testing

• The advantages of automated testing can also be disadvantages. A human tester is an all-terrain utility vehicle on a perilous mountain route, while an auto tester is a Ferrari on a known, straight track. 

• An auto-tester is limited to a single track and requires ongoing training to make accurate comparisons. This means that auto testers need testing experts who are also proficient in programming. In other words, unless appropriate variables and instructions are provided, an automated tester won’t produce usable findings.

• Due to these restrictions, automated testing systems are unable to do random testing and are more likely to crash when scaling problems worsen. 

• You might be surprised to learn that automated testers are not people. A testing procedure lacks the human touch if there is no human involved. An auto-tester cannot successfully create a positive user or consumer experience.

• These cruel limitations have a significant negative influence on debugging and maintenance. Large portions of the script must be rebuilt for each new programmed update, which takes time.

4. Pros and cons of Manual Software Testing

4.1. Pros of Manual Software Testing

• The majority of problems are found through manual testing of an application, including the way it looks and feels. 

• To find UI and UX issues, the analyzer can swiftly access visual aspects including text, layout, and other components. 

• It normally has a cheap operational cost because we don’t require specialised equipment or highly skilled personnel. 

• It is appropriate if we need to make unforeseen changes to the application because it is adaptable. 

• Humans may observe, judge, and provide intuition during manual tests; this is beneficial for user-friendliness or a rich consumer experience.

4.2. Cons of Manual Software Testing

• Testing by hand requires a lot of time. 

• It is challenging to distinguish between size variations and colour combinations of GUI items using a manual test. 

• Performance testing and load testing are impractical because of the manual tests. 

• When there are many tests, manually running them takes a lot of time. 

• Regression Manual test cases are time-consuming to finish.

5. Pros and Cons of Unit Software Testing

5.1. Pros of Unit Software Testing

• Unit testing employs a modular approach because any component can be tested without holding up the testing of other components. 

• The developing team concentrates on the functionality provided by the unit and how functionality should appear in unit test cases to understand the unit API.

• After a few days, unit testing enables the developer to modify the code and verify that the module is still operating faultlessly.

5.2. Cons of Unit Software Testing

• As it only examines individual code units, it cannot detect integration or high-level errors. 

• Since it is impossible to evaluate every execution route during unit testing, errors in the programmer cannot be found in every instance. 

• It works best when combined with other diagnostic procedures.

Conclusion 

As we’ve just seen, each type of testing—automated, manual, and unit—has advantages and disadvantages. It’s critical to take into account both testing approaches while creating your quality assurance plan. QA makes sure that the project launches without significant flaws and gets the greatest feedback on how effectively the app or website functions in a production environment since three testing methodologies are crucial to increasing a successful product. 

Despite the frequent evolution of software development, these three types of testing remain a crucial part of the testing lifecycle. Through the course of the development process, it helps in the early detection of problems. Additionally, it makes sure that units that already have “bad” codes do not receive any new “good” codes. Therefore, getting knowledgeable about testing and including it in your software development process is essential.

Additionally, test management tools are crucial for accelerating the testing procedure. They are also essential for controlling the overall cost of testing.

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