The quality of any software application
depends on how it performs in different conditions. Even a feature-rich
application will be rejected by its target audience if it doesn’t
perform as it should. In these times of techno-savvy world, quality
precedes everything and it has become a major factor in determining the
success of any software product and that is getting proved time and again. We have been seeing major software vendors hurriedly releasing products only to be rejected by people.
These days, the major cost for any company is the cost of employing
hundreds or even thousands of resources to work on a project to release
a product. In this competitive world, companies have to produce and
release newproducts and periodically upgrade them in order to stay in the game. If they are not able to release the product on time, the loss they have to incur is going to be substantial and if the product doesn’t show the quality, it is bound to fail to reach the masses.
This is where software testing plays an extremely important role in assuring the quality of the product.
As releasing a substandard product is the surefire way to tarnish the
brand image, negligence in software quality assurance can result in a
huge financial loss to the company that can produce both short-term and
long-term effects. For this, any software development
cycle should have an efficient test plan that can assure the highest
possible quality to the released product. Each and every phase of
testing plan should contain a thorough documentation that can help the
testers do a proper job of testing.
Most of the products are tested for different aspects like stability, speed, errors etc. with the use of load testing, performance testing,
stress testing to name a few. Companies employ two types of testing
viz. manual testing and automation testing. In manual testing, there is
considerable user interaction with the software to assess various
aspects to ensure quality. But automated testing entails no manual
interaction with the application being tested for issues.
Both testing methods are crucial for any product. Manual testing is
important for assessing certain things that can’t be done by pre
programmed algorithms. But manual testing takes considerable amount of
time especially in some kinds of tests. For this reason, automated
software testing tools are employed in scenarios where they can be
used. Automation testing tools can be programmed to repeatedly do
specific activities so that the application being tested can be
stressed to the max to ensure quality.
Performance testing, like load testing can be automated to check any software application
for quality. Automated software testing tools play a crucial role in
the development and testing cycle of any product. If you want your
software to be released on time, employing automated tools makes good
sense.