Few people outside the IT industry have a clear idea of what software testers do. But even among those directly involved in software development, there are often misconceptions about the work of quality assurance professionals. Let’s finally destroy some common myths about testing.
Testing is too expensive
Have you ever heard the phrase: “If you do not want to pay for testing in the development process – then you will have to give money to those who fix bugs after release”. Early testing helps save resources, while failure or neglect of testing can have the saddest effect on the quality of your product.
Testing takes a long time
In itself, testing (provided the competent organization of production processes) goes hand in hand with the development, so to talk about the time spent on testing can be very approximate. The truth is that correcting errors found in the testing process takes time and effort – but the result of these efforts will be to increase product quality.
Only finished products are tested
Without a doubt, testing depends on the code written. But there is still testing the requirements and creating test artefacts that can be done before creating a finished version of the product. In addition, in the iterative model of development, the processes of testing and writing code are quite independent.
You can fully test the program
The problem arises when the client or project manager thinks so. This statement directly contradicts the second principle of testing, so yes, you can perform many tests and provide full coverage of the functionality, but this will not mean that the software is fully tested. There may always be a mistake you missed. Therefore, comprehensive testing is impossible – we can bring the quality of the system to an acceptable level.
Testers are to blame for the missed bugs
It is wrong to blame testers that bugs remain in applications even after a full test cycle. The problem here is time constraints, development costs, and requirements that can change frequently. Testers, like other participants in the development process, are often limited in time and resources, which affects the quality of their work. Therefore, it is necessary to determine priorities.
Testers are responsible for product quality
This is a very common mistake. The responsibilities of the testers include finding bugs and passing information about them to interested participants in the development process, after which the latter decides what to do with these bugs – will they be fixed or postponed.
The only task of the tester is to find bugs
From the previous sections, you should have already understood that this is far from the case. While developers tend to work in a fairly specialized field, testers need to understand the organization of the system as a whole. In addition, in modern conditions, testers often participate not only in their own testing but also in quality assurance processes.
Anyone can test the software
People in the non-IT industry often think that anyone without special training can test and that testing is a job that does not require special knowledge and creativity. Be that as it may, testers are well aware that this is a myth.
Today, to become a sought-after specialist in the field of software testing, you need to have a sufficient level of training, understand the current trends in information technology and have the necessary personal qualities for the profession. A good tester, in addition to the field of testing, must know the basics of programming.
