Why Manual Software Testing Is Crucial?

In today’s world, especially the IT sector, the jungle rule prevails i.e. survival of the fittest. There is absolutely no room for the meek or the slow. This leads to longer hours, associates stretching beyond normal limits, and very often burning the midnight oil. However, all these practices come at a price. The human body can only bear so much, and after a certain point, mistakes start creeping in. This is where “Manual Software Testing” comes into play, carefully picking up the lost pieces in the creation, and exposing the flaws.

It has been noticed time and again, that Manual Software Testing is a crucial and indispensable part of any project. Even before the project starts, testing comes into play in the feasibility phase. With a Software test manager in the team, one can get a clear estimate of the required time, materials and resources. This leads to better planning, and a lot of overall savings in terms of time and money. Early test estimates are a crucial factor in the decision to proceed with the product.

Moreover, with the involvement of software testers in the product planning step, deep and insightful questions are asked. Typical of testers, they scrutinize the requirements with a skeptical eye, and rapidly classify the ones which might not be testable. According to the Baziuk Study (1995), the cost to repair a fault in the Operations stage is 470 – 880 times the cost to repair the same fault in the Requirements analysis phase of the project.

Even in the exploration of improvement areas for any software, testing plays a crucial role. With practices like Root Cause Analysis, the overall efficiency of the product may increase upto ten-fold. Various aspects of testing like defect reports, metrics and results help the project managers gauge the progress of the project.

Looking from the business point of view, testing is the only way of knowing whether the newly created product delivers the intended functionality. To promote repeat sales, every client needs an assurance that the new product will not adversely affect the working of the system already in place. Manual Software Testing is exhaustively used to ensure the same, enabling the testers to verify the working of the new product under the existing conditions.

However, ignoring the testing process has proved highly detrimental in many instances. Some of the recent incidents involve a sum of $172 million, which was borne by the Japanese electronics maker Matsushita, to replace the faulty Nokia-branded BL-5C batteries.

In conclusion, it can be safely inferred that testing is an irreplaceable process in the software development cycle. Apart from saving a lot of time and money, it is also the buoy which keeps the software performance afloat.

1 comment:

  1. Great post - very informative.

    Well done and keep it up your good work

    ReplyDelete