What are software testing services?
Software testing and software quality assurance (SQA) services include activities such as functional, integration, compatibility, performance, usability, security, and compliance testing as well as SQA strategy design and SQA process improvements.
Software testing may be considered a part of a software quality assurance (SQA) process. In SQA, software process specialists are concerned with the software development process rather than just the artifacts such as documentation, code and systems. They examine and change the software engineering process itself to reduce the number of faults that end up in the delivered software: the so-called defect rate.
Since 1985, Nexus Software Systems has provided expert software testing and SQA services to validate and ensure the quality of software with regard to its requirements and business needs.
Software testing is an essential part of the software development cycle. It is considered an important activity where software is validated to be in compliance with requirements and specifications.
Software testing has historically been separated from the rest of development. It’s often conducted later in the software development life cycle after the product build or execution stage. A software tester may only have a small window to test the code – sometimes just before the application goes to market. If defects are found, there may be little time for recoding or retesting.
Software testing earlier in the development cycle helps keep the testing effort at the forefront rather than as an afterthought to development.
Earlier software tests makes defects easier and less expensive to fix.
Since most software fails because of mistakes, eliminating the mistakes at the earliest possible step is a relatively inexpensive and reliable way to produce software.
IBM found that it cost 6.5 times more to fix a bug found during implementation than to fix one identified during design. The cost to fix bugs found during the testing phase (if seperate from the development) could be 15 times more than the cost of fixing those found during design. After a software product is in production the cost to fix an error found during maintenance was up to 100 times more expensive to fix than if it was uncovered during the design phase.
The need for quality control when developing software is self-evident. Late delivery or software defects can damage a brand’s reputation — leading to frustrated and lost customers. In some cases, a bug or defect can have catastrophic effects as could be the case with healthcare or industrial software.
Consider the software bug that caused the failure of a $1.2 billion military satellite launch. The failure was the latest in a string of launch failures, triggering a complete military and industry review of U.S. space launch programs, including the software integration and testing processes. Or the stock of a major health industry company that dropped 60% due to reports of failures in its computer billing systems, problems with a large database conversion, and inadequate software testing.
The numbers speak for themselves. A report by the Consortium for Information & Software Quality (CISQ), titled “The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2020 Report,” calculated the total cost of poor software quality in the United States to be $2.08 trillion in 2020. What’s more, software failures impacted billions of customers.
Though testing itself costs money, companies can save millions per year in development and support if they have a good testing technique and QA processes in place. Early software testing uncovers problems before a product goes to market. The sooner development teams receive test feedback, the sooner they can address issues such as:
- Architectural flaws
- Poor design decisions
- Invalid or incorrect functionality
- Security vulnerabilities
- Scalability issues
When software development includes testing, it improves software reliability and high-quality applications are delivered with few errors. A system that meets or even exceeds customer expectations leads to potentially more sales and greater market share.
Test Driven Development
Test Driven Development, or TDD, is a software design technique where the programmer writes a test before writing the code, and then writes the code that will make that test pass.
Testing has the greatest effect on the quality of your code when it’s an integral part of your software development workflow.
The test driven development concept can also be used to improve legacy code with the addition new functionality and features.
Functional Software Testing
Functional testing refers to activities that verify a specific action or function of the code. These are usually found in the code requirements documentation, although some development methodologies work from use cases or user stories.
Unit Tests
Unit testing is a software testing method where individual units of source code, the smallest piece of code that can be logically isolated in a system, are tested to determine whether they are working according to their functional requirements.
The cost of finding a software bug before coding begins or when the code is first written is considerably lower than the cost of detecting, identifying, and correcting the bug later.
Unit testing finds problems early in the software development cycle. This includes both bugs in the programmer’s implementation and flaws or missing parts of the specification for the unit. The process of writing a thorough set of tests forces software developers to think through inputs, outputs, and error conditions, and define the unit’s desired behavior in more detail.
With test driven development, you create the unit tests before you write the code, so you use the unit tests as both design documentation and functional specifications.
Before a software function or other block of application code is written, unit tests are created that verify the behavior of the code in response to standard, boundary, and incorrect cases of input data, and that check any explicit or implicit assumptions made by the code.
Unit tests are foundational. They are the easiest tests to build. They execute quickly and can often run in parallel. They make for a great continuous integration gating mechanism. Unit tests often provide the best feedback about the general health of your system.
Unit testing limitations
Unit testing by definition only tests the functionality of the units themselves. So, it will not catch integration errors or broader system-level errors (such as functions performed across multiple units, or non-functional test areas such as performance).
Unit testing should be done in conjunction with other software testing activities, as unit tests can only show the presence or absence of particular errors; they cannot prove a complete absence of errors.
To guarantee correct behavior for every execution path and every possible input, and ensure the absence of errors, other techniques are required, specifically the application of formal methods to prove that a software component has no unexpected behavior.
Non-functional software testing
What we’ve covered are known as functional tests. But there are also other types of requirements besides functional ones that you may want to address.
Non-functional testing refers to aspects of the software that may not be related to a specific function or user action, such as scalability or other performance, behavior under certain constraints, or security.
Non-functional requirements tend to be those that reflect the quality of the product, particularly in the context of the suitability perspective of its users.
Non-functional software testing includes:
Performance testing: Your application may behave according to requirements in terms of functionality but still be unusable for end users due to weak performance. In software quality assurance, performance testing is generally a testing practice performed to determine how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload.
Endurance testing: Even if your system is performant, it doesn’t mean it can survive a continuously high workload. Endurance Testing is non-functional type of software testing where software is tested with high load extended over a significant amount of time to evaluate the behavior of software application under sustained use. When we embrace the idea that every piece of software can be vulnerable, we design systems that are failure-resistant.
Security testing: Nowadays, there should be no need to repeat that security is crucial. Every system that is connected to the network can potentially be compromised. Performing security tests early on during software development gives the same benefits as other kinds of tests: you can catch problems before they are much more expensive to fix.
Availability testing: While poor performance may discourage your end users from using your software, poor availability may prevent them from accessing it at all. Though availability problems may be due to performance overload, there are other causes for lost availability.
Compatibility testing: The most important use of compatibility testing is to ensure whether developed software works under different configurations (as stated in the requirements). This testing is necessary to check whether the application is compatible with the customer’s environment. Compatibility tests are important because they confirm the successful performance of a software application across all specified platforms, ensuring every customer will have a positive experience no matter what environment they use.
Usability testing: Even a product that ticks all of the previous boxes may still be unsatisfactory for the users, if it has a clunky interface and unintuitive interaction. Usability testing refers to evaluating software by testing it with representative users. Usability testing lets the design and development teams identify problems before they are fully coded. The earlier issues are identified and fixed, the less expensive the fixes will be in terms of both development time and possible impact to the schedule. It’s important to perform a usability assessment each time the UI or the workflow of the system changes.
Compliance testing also know as Conformance testing is a non-functional testing technique which is done to validate whether the system developed meets the organization’s prescribed standards or not. Internal standards are standards set by an organization. External standards include compliance with industry-specific standards such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Good automated manufacturing practice (GAMP), The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), etc.
Consistent, high-quality coding standards improve software quality, reduce time-to-market, promote teamwork, eliminate time wasted on inconsequential matters, and simplify maintenance.
Regression testing: Checking whether new features break or degrade functionality. regression testing is re-running functional and non-functional tests to ensure that previously developed and tested software still performs after a change. If not, that would be called a regression. Changes that may require regression testing include bug fixes, software enhancements and configuration changes.
Managed testing services
Nexus Software Systems’ dedicated software testing team takes over a part or the whole scope of your testing activities on a pay-per-unit or per project basis, taking full responsibility for the test process management and the quality of software under test.
Every aspect of your software, validated
We test functional and non-functional software features to make sure it complies with the requirements specification and provides an outstanding user experience.
Your software is audited from different angles, including code quality, functionality, usability, performance and security and you are provided with a detailed report containing the list of the found issues and recommendations on how to fix them.
Software testing services for different application types
- API Testing
- Desktop application testing
- Web application testing
- SaaS testing
- Mobile app testing
- Data warehouse testing
Transparent testing reports
To guarantee complete and systematic test coverage and ensure full transparency over the performed testing activities, We provide test documentation required by ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-3:2013.
Software testing with business continuity in mind
Nexus Software Systems’ test engineers are proficient in multiple domains and understand business processes in these domains very well, which enables them to not only test your software, but ensure it provides for the continuity of your business operations.
Nexus Software Systems offers cost and time effective flexible testing services to ensure software reliability, availability, cybersecurity, scalability, stability and uninterrupted smooth functioning.
Contact us to learn more about our software testing services
References: Unit testing - Wikipedia Software testing - Wikipedia