why is testing necessary? testing is not necessarily something that is easy to define. it is ascertaining to whether a system works?

whether a system works and conforms to the requirements? whether a system works when the user acts like a user and enters all the inputs in the wrong way and pushes all the wrong buttons at the wrong time tha a system works correctly as specified but also quick enough to be useful and friendly according to the glossary of terms used in software testing, testing is the process consisting of all life cycle activities, both static and dynamic concern ed with planning,preparation and evaluation of software products and related wor k products to determine that they satisfy specified requirement, to demonostrate that they are fit for purpose and to detect errors software systems are an increasing part of life, from business applications to c onsumer products. more and more organizations are placing a major emphasis on so ftware systems to be more efficient,competitive and able to provide their custom er needs. we are seeing larger and larger percentages of businessess budgets bei ng allocated to developing,implementing and maintaing these computer systems. th at is because businesses are aware that if they are unable to provide a service due to not having the required technology then there is a high likelyhood that t heir customers will take their business elsewhere. most of us have had an experience with software that did not work as expected. s oftware that does not work can have a large impact on an organisaton it can lead to many problems including loss of money: this can include losing customers right through to financial pena lities for non-compliance to legal requirements loss of time this can be caused by transactions taking a long time to process bu t can include staff not being able to work due to fault or failure damage to business reputation: if an organisation is unable to provide service t o their customers due to software problems then the customers will lose confiden ce or faith in this organisation injury or death it may sound dramatic but some safety-critical systems could res ult in injuries or deaths if they do not work properly(e.g flight traffic contro l software) causes of software defects: error: an error is a human action that produces an incorrect result(mistake) defect: a defect is a flaw in a component or system that can cause the component or system to fail to perform its required function a failure is an actual deviation of the component or system from its expected de livery, service or result a human ccan make an error, which produces a defect in the code in software,in t he system or in a document if a defect in code is executed the system will fail to do what it should do (or

do something it should not) causing a failure defects in software systems or documents may result in failures, but not all def ects do so errors can be introduced in many places during the software development life cyc le. the first place an error occurs is during the system conception while the id eas are still being formulated. if a wrong idea makes it through this process it is likely to be carried through the system design phase into the development. e rrors like these can be virtually impossible to detect until it is too late CAUSES OF SOFTWARE DEFECTS 1) humans are fallible because of time pressure complex code complexity of the infrastructure changed technologies many system interactions failures can be caused by environmental conditions as well; radiation, magnetism , electronic fields and pollution can cause faults in firmware or influence the execution of software by changing the hardware conditions. roles of testing in software development, maintenance and operations we previously listed some of the risks that can be realised during the process o f releasing software. to help reduce the risk to the business it is important to perform testing rigorous testing of system and documentation can help to reduce the risk of prob lems occurring during operation and contribute to the quality of the software sy stem(if defects found are corrected before the system is released for operationa l use) software testing may also be required to meet contractual or legal requirements, or industry specific standards. for example a 3rd party software supplier may h ave guaranteed service levels written into the supply contract with the client t hat specifies how much testing must be performed by the supplier testing and risk there are many different types of risks that may be connected to a software deve lopment project. there are also many different definitions of risks, perhaps the easiest being: a factor that could result in future negative consequences; usually expresse d as impact and likelikhood in other words, if part of your system failed and as a result of that a person w as injured or even killed, or if your company lost significant amounts of money or if your customer based lost faith then your business would most definitely su ffer. you would certainly want to make sure that part of the system had been ful ly tested. as such you would probaly assign a high or critical risk assessment t o that part from the above it can be seen that as far as testing goes, we are concerned with the risk of failure. as testing is an exercise in risk reduction the test team should seek to influence the delivery of software to achieve the optimum risk re duction profile

the amount of testing performed depends on the risks involved. risks must be ued as the bases for allocation test time and for selecting what to test and where to place emphasis. TESTING AND QUALITY we often hear the word quality being bandied around without any thought of what is being meant by the word: quality is defined as the degree to which a compnent, system or process meets s pecified requirements and /or user/ customer needs and expectations with the help of testing it is possible to measure the quality in terms of defec ts found for both functional and non-functional software requirements and charac teristics. quality starts at the begining of the project not where the code is d elivered. by testing we gather information on where errors occur enter the sdlc and therefore concentrate effort on resolving quality issues to improve the deve lopment process. testing and quality software quality characteristics are defined by iso 9126 software engineering - product quality as functionality reliability usability efficiency maintainability portability