What are seven Software Testing principles ?

Seven software Testing principles

1 – Testing shows a presence of defects

• • • It is important to remember that testing shows the presence of defects and not their absence, thorough testing will give everyone confidence that the software will not fail.
    • Testing shows presence of defects principle does not confirm that any software is completely correct and completely devoid of issues.
    • Testing reduces the probability of undiscovered defects remaining in the software but even if no defects are found, it is not a proof of correctness.

2 – Exhaustive testing is impossible

• • • Software tester can’t test all combinations of inputs and preconditions ,it is absolutely impossible to test EVERYTHING .
    • Instead of testing all combinations, do risk analysis and prioritise to focus testing efforts.
    • One of the skills of testing is assessing risks and planning your tests around these – you can then cover vast areas, while making sure test the most important functions.

3 – Early Testing (saves time and money)

• • • Testing early is important in the software lifecycles because amending the code or issue at this stage is a lot easier and cheaper than doing at the end of the product’s lifecycle,
    • Start testing early to find defects.
    • Software tester should always focus on test objectives.

4 – Defect Clustering

• • • A small number of modules contain most of the defects detected.
    • As per Pareto’s Principal or 80 – 20 Rule 80% of Defects are Caused by 20% of code.
    • Once these areas have been identified, so focus testing on the sensitive areas.
    • Testing effort should be focused proportionally to the defect density

5 – Pesticide Paradox

• • • If the same tests are repeated over and over again, eventually the same set of test cases will no longer find any new bugs.
    • To overcome ‘pesticide paradox’, the test cases need to be regularly reviewed and revised, and new and different tests need to be written to exercise different parts of the software to potentially find more defects.

6 – Testing is context dependent

• • • Different software products have varying requirements, functions and purposes so same tests should not be applied across all.
    • Tester might use a different approach, techniques, and types of testing depending upon the application type.
    • For example, testing of the e-commerce site is different from the testing of the Banking site.

 7 – Absence-of-errors fallacy

• • • Finding and fixing defects doesn’t help if the system is unusable or does not meet users’ needs and expectations
    • For example -sometimes 99% of the defect-free software can remain unusable if the software is developed with the wrong requirements.

         So these are the Seven Software Testing Principles. Everyone should be aware and understand these seven principles of software testing as these are called as the pillars for testing. By adopting these principles, software development teams can increase the chances of identifying and fixing defects early in the development process, which will result in a more reliable and stable software system.

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