Learn More About Software Testing Tools
What is Software Testing Software?
Software testing tools help users gain information about their software’s functionality, usability, and performance. Quality assurance is one of the greatest benefits to software testing solutions. Users can diagnose issues, track bugs, manage development timelines, and improve their overall product.
Quality Assurance Planning — Quality assurance is one of the largest components of the application lifecycle and can be assisted through software testing features like project statuses and quality reporting. Reporting tools can outline the project work scope, while project status features help alert users of issues, schedule tests, and meet deadlines. Planning tools can be greatly beneficial when working in agile structures, as schedules can change rapidly.
Customizability can also be crucial to ensuring your application meets your specific functionality and performance specifications. Software testing products are better suited for resolving specific issues, but general add-on tools may help track bugs and diagnose issues. Some users reported great benefits when working with custom products they’d created for clients. Each individual application can have different metrics, standards, and assessments.
Manual and Automated Testing — Manual software testing and issue tracking can be tedious but are often necessary. Aside from tasks easily solved by testing scripts, instances may demand ad hoc ticketing, end-to-end situational analysis, or manual security audits. Users have reported benefits from being able to manually assign tests or resolutions to individual specialists. Software testing users have also described benefits in planning and executing user tests with random and in-house individuals.
However, users often want to limit the need for manual testing, which is far and away the most commonly cited business problem solved using software testing solutions. These products can usually automate test runs or scripts to continuously examine a product’s functionality. This often reduces testing time and frees up developers to find solutions, resolve issues, and develop new features or products.
In the end, a hybrid approach tends to be the most common. Ideal solutions allow users to expedite and optimize their processes by managing and separating manual and automatable tasks. This allows teams to tailor their process to team and project needs. Once that organization is concrete, automating iterative tasks can take place while individuals manually sift through and test issues requiring manual effort.
Other Business Problems Solved with Software Testing Products
Regardless of your product’s audience or basic functionality, all development teams desire performance optimization. Software testing solutions can keep products running more swiftly while simultaneously monitoring and testing them as new issues arise.
Some of the other business problems solved with software testing products include:
- Reporting and documenting performance data and trends
- Maintaining performance over extended periods of time
- Managing software requirements or standards
- Tracking time, managing cases, and optimizing performance
Key Benefits of Software Testing Software
- Build software faster with automated test management
- Enhance overall quality of the product with continuous application testing
- Ensure that software works correctly and focuses on the tasks it is meant to achieve
- Discover faults early before they manifest into larger issues
- Demonstrate to stakeholders and potential buyers that the product works
Why Use Software Testing Software?
Quality assurance — Nobody likes running across functionality issues in their software, especially software that they might have just spent money on. Software testing tools help minimize these occurrences. Breaks shouldn’t occur in finalized products, and software testing software helps ensure breaks don’t happen.
Customer satisfaction — Software stability helps to bring in customers and keep them. The more often your software functions without a hitch, the more likely your customers will keep coming back for more, and more importantly, the more likely they are to recommend your products to others. Software testing software helps your company create quality software that makes customers happy.
Costs saved — Hotfixes and software updates after a product’s release are costly in both labor hours and resource needs. Software testing software helps to minimize the need for post-production tweaks, letting your teams focus on new projects instead of correcting old ones.
Who Uses Software Testing Software?
Testing software is an integral part of the development lifecycle. Understanding what functionalities are and are not working, as well as identifying potential snags or missed opportunities, is critical to a successful product release.
No matter the development framework, the target platform, or the software type, every development team should have access to and be using software testing software in some form during development. This helps developers stay on top of potential issues in code, and they can identify potential breakpoints that only happen during nonstandard application use.
User experience (UX) teams also can benefit from utilizing software testing software. By combining software testing with evaluations of the user experience, teams can create more fluid software that fits and functions to the consumer’s exact needs.
Kinds of Software Testing Software
Static vs. dynamic testing — Static testing focuses more on implicit testing, like when a programmer edits software. Dynamic testing involves running a software project against a set of tests to determine if it will pass the testing. Development teams may implement both methods when creating a project, but it is important to understand which testing method a team will use when selecting a software testing product.
White-box vs. black-box testing — White-box testing involves programmers testing a project from the inside. The white-box method tests how software is performing its function. The black box tests software only for functionality to see if a project performs the tasks it’s designed for. Software testing tools may be designed for a specific method. Development teams should consider this when choosing a software testing tool.
Suite vs. best-of-breed — Some software testing tools incorporate many solutions into one suite product. These suite products often combine features like software testing, version control, bug tracking, test automation, project management, and more. Best-of-breed products, on the other hand, focus on only one of these solutions. Software teams should consider which model is best for them when choosing a software testing product.
Software Testing Software Features
Test case management — Lay out the test cases your teams need, create new ones, or remove cases that are no longer valid.
Issue tracking — Identify issues in the application’s function, track those issues through resolution, and verify that issue resolution did not cause any other incidental issues.
Variable testing methods and types — Whether worried about scalability, performance under stress, or general functionality, software testing software should have the capability to run tests on any areas of concern.
Reporting and metrics — Software testing software can keep track of all testing results, revealing metrics around tests and generating reports or dashboards for any testing your team runs.
Third-party integration — As an integral part of the development lifecycle, software testing tools can integrate into other development lifecycle tools to centralize all relevant information.
Potential Issues with Software Testing Software
Software testing tools greatly increase efficacy and quality during the development process, but there are some considerations that should be kept in mind when seeking out the right testing tool for your team.
Development models — Development teams build software projects from a number of different models (e.g., agile, lean, scrum, and waterfall). Software testing tools can be designed for a specific development method. The methodology development teams implement for their projects will also affect when they will need software testing tools in the project’s lifecycle. Development teams should consider these factors when choosing a software testing tool.
Frameworks — Development teams have choices in frameworks when building software. Frameworks allow developers to focus on building their software without needing to also build their development environment. Software testing tools can be designed with a specific framework in mind, so consider your team’s framework(s) when searching for a new product.
Integrations — Some software testing products allow for integrations with other existing software tools. Many software testing best-of-breed products have integration features (e.g., bug tracking) with best-of-breed solutions. Development teams should consider their current software solutions and whether they will be compatible with a potential new software testing tool.
