Testing is a process used to help identify the appropriateness, wholeness and quality of developed computer software. Testing can never completely establish the correctness of computer software. There are many approaches to software testing, but effective testing of complex products is essentially a process of investigation, not merely a matter of creating and following rote procedure. Testing helps is verifying and validating if the Software is working as it is intended to be working. Things involve using Static and Dynamic methodologies to Test the application. Because of the shortcoming of its human designers and its own abstract, complex nature, software development must be accompanied by quality assurance activities. It is not unusual for developers to spend 45% of the total project time on testing. Software testing is a fundamental component of software quality assurance and represents a review of specification, design and coding.
STLC (Software Testing Life Cycle) is simply a testing phase in the SDLC development. Validation and Authentication is tried and tested in this phase. The only limitation of this cycle is that it is limited to respective individual phase and is carried out by a group of skilled testers and technology evangelistic. Testing is the one step in the software process that can be seen by the developer as destructive instead of constructive. Software engineers are typically constructive people and testing requires them to overcome preconceived concepts of correctness and deal with conflicts when errors are recognized.
Testing in the early hours in the life cycle reduces the errors. Test deliverables are associated with every phase of development. The goal of Software Tester is to find bugs, find them as early as possible, and make them sure they are fixed.
This can be difficult to determine. “When to stop testing” is one of the most difficult questions to a test engineer .Common factors in deciding when to stop.
Software testing accounts for a large percentage of effort in the software development process, but we have only recently begun to understand the subtleties of systematic planning, execution and control. For an IT organization, developing a software system that meets the business needs of clients is always a challenge. Software testing is a process without which the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) stands incomplete.
It is the process that identifies the correctness, completeness and quality of the software developed during the SDLC process. Software bugs and improperly tested codes cost millions in damages and millions more in time and money to fix the defect.