Overview of Testing - Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Software Development Life Cycle - page 1

Chapter 1

Overview of Testing

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

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to identify the basic mindset of a tester, regardless of what is being tested
to determine the correct motivations for testing in business
to explain some of the reasons why testing is undervalued as a business practice
to explain what differentiates software testers from software developers

1.1 INTRODUCTION

There were numerous spectacular magazine cover stories about computer software
failures during the last decade. Even with these visible lessons in the consequences
of poor software, software failures continue to occur on and off the front page. These
failures cost the US economy an estimated $59.5 billion per year. [1] An estimated
$22.2 billion of the annual losses could be eliminated by software testing appropri-
ately conducted during all the phases of software development. [2]
“Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Software Development Life Cycle”
presents the fi rst comprehensive treatment of all 21st Century testing activities from
test planning through test completion for every phase of software under development or
software under revision. The authors believe that the cover story business catastrophes can
best be prevented by such a comprehensive approach to software testing. Furthermore,
the authors believe the regular and consistent practice of such a comprehensive testing
approach can raise the industry level of quality that software developers deliver and
customers expect. By using a comprehensive testing approach, software testers can turn
the negative risk of major business loss into a positive competitive edge.
Many excellent textbooks on the market deeply explore software testing for
narrow segments of software development. [3-5] One of the intermediate-level
testing textbooks that the authors recommend as a follow-on to this textbook is Dr.
James A. Whittaker's Practical Guide to Testing . [6] None of these textbooks deal
with software testing from the perspective of the entire development life cycle, which