What Test Process Means for Most Non-Technical People and What It Really Is

While all our reasoning about testing and its purposes may seem like a delicate semantic game, however, it is established by practice that it is they that to a larger extent determine the success of test effort. The point is that the correctly chosen goal can improve the quality of the process and provides an important psychological effect, since the human consciousness is characterized by the target orientation. If we aim to demonstrate the absence of errors, then we will subconsciously strive for this goal, choosing test data, on which the probability of error occurrence is rather small. At the same time, if our task is to detect errors, then the test we create is more likely to detect errors. Such an approach will significantly improve the quality of the program than the first one.

The above definition of testing gives rise to several consequences. For example, one of them is that testing is a destructive process (i.e., opposite to creative, constructive). This explains why many programmers and testers find it difficult. Most people prefer the constructive process of creating objects and, to a lesser extent, the destructive process of dividing objects into parts. Second, based on the above definition, it is possible to determine to build a set of test data and who should (and who should not) test this program.

Independent verification and validation testing services are independent activities that are used together for making sure that no defects are present in a given software app or a system and these meet a set of design specifications.  

To strengthen the definition of testing, we will analyze the two categories such as “successful” and “unsuccessful” tests and, in particular, their application by project managers while evaluating test results. Some software project managers refer to the test run as “unsuccessful” if an error is found, and, conversely, successful if it passes without errors. More often than not, this is the result of a mistaken understanding of the term “testing”, since, in fact, the word “successful” means “productive”, and the word “unsuccessful” means “undesirable”, “ineffective”. But if the test fails to find an error, its execution is associated with loss of time and money, and the term “successful” cannot be applied to it in any way. Naturally, it is not known beforehand whether the test will be successful or unsuccessful, but the construction of successful tests is a separate topic.