Testing can be described as the process of evaluating a system or its component(s) with the purpose to find whether it meets the specified requirements or not. Simply, testing is executing a system with an intention to identify any possible errors, gaps, or missing requirements in contradiction with the current requirements.

ANSI/IEEE 1059 standard defined Testing as:

A process of a software item analyzing in order to detect the discrepancies between actual and required conditions (that is errors/bugs/defects) and to estimate the software item features.

Testing is a process of a software item analyzing in order to detect the discrepancies between actual and required conditions.

Why Software Testing is Important

There are number of reasons that make software testing very important: 

• Software testing is essential to indicate the defects and errors that may occur during the development phases. 
• It’s important since it verifies the Customer’s reliability and their content with the application. 
• It is very important to guarantee the Quality of the product.  Quality product supplied to the customers helps to gain their confidence. 
• Testing is necessary while providing the facilities to the customers like the delivery of high quality product or software application which requires minimal maintenance cost and hence shows more precise, consistent and reliable results. 
• Testing is required for an effective performance of software application or product. 
• It’s important to ensure that the application should not result into any failures because it can lead to extra expenses in the future or in the later stages of the development. 
• It’s required to stay in the business. 

Firstly you may not necessarily have the customer or it may just be some idea that you want to implement, such as a website or an entertainment portal. We dictate the requirements by ourselves, depending on its target audience and content. But it doesn't mean that there are no requirements at all, there are some. A website will still have to be checked for bugs that can make its usage torturous and thus easily scare the target audience away. Software testing has different aims and objectives.

Software Testing Objectives

The main objectives of software testing are the following: 

• Detecting software defects that may be created by the programmer while being developed. 
• Gaining confidence in software application and providing information about the level of quality. 
• Preventing defects. 
• Verifying that the final result meets the business and user requirements. 
• Ensuring that it satisfies the BRS that is Business Requirement Specification and SRS that is System Requirement Specifications. 
• Gaining customers confidence by providing them a quality product. 

Software testing helps to finalize the software application or the product according to business and user requirements. Having a good test coverage is very important for providing complete software application testing and getting assured that it’s performing well and in accordance with the specifications. Besides there is a slight dissonance between business needs and requirements of the end user and that should also be taken into account. If you are doing something of enterprise-level then separate wishes of  users and customers can be ignored for the sake of general program's stability. The crucial moment here is the efficiency of the program as a tool for business. Often the corporation may even overlook some minor issues if the business runs and money is earned. But if you work on programs for mobile platforms and mass market , then every individual user becomes an important person whose opinion should be taken into consideration in order to succeed in this business.

Software testing helps to finalize the software application or the product according to business and user requirements. 

While determining the coverage the test cases should be well designed with a wide range of possibilities to detect errors or bugs. The effectiveness of test cases should be very high. This objective can be measured by the amount of defects reported per test cases. The higher the amount of the defects found the more effective the test cases are.

Software Bugs

A software bug is an error, a flaw or a failure in a computer program or a fault that causes it to produce an faulty or unexpected outcome, or to act in unintended ways. There are several explanations of bugs origin, such as mistakes and errors committed by people in either a program's source code or in frameworks and operating systems used by such programs, and incorrect code produced by compilers. A program containing a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy. Reports revealing bugs in a program are commonly called as bug reports, fault reports, defect reports, problem reports, trouble reports, change requests, and so forth.

Reports revealing bugs in a program are called as bug reports.

It is worth noting that anything that is not stated in the customer's requirements is not necessarily a bug. Sometimes the system is meant to work with a certain variations by the developer. Moreover, it happens that this behaviour may take some utility characteristics and that allows to call it a feature, not a bug. ))) This phenomenon does not happen frequently but it is worth regarding as a utility feature can become a free bonus to developed solution. It's a kind of sweet cherry on top of an ice-cream that you can present to your customers for free and it will also help you gain authority.

Once the product is delivered to the final users or the customers they should be able to operate it without any complaints. In order to make this happen the tester should be informed of the customer's intentions to use this product and according to them test scenarios should be written and certain test cases designed. This will help to meet all the customer’s requirements.

Software testing ensures that the testing is being done thoroughly and hence the system is ready for the customize usage. Good coverage means that various areas like functionality of the application, performance testing to demonstrate the performance of the application and specific load testing to verify that the system is reliable and should not crash or there should not be any blocking issues as well as its compatibility with different types of browsers, hardware and the OS compatibility have been done while testing. It also determines whether the application can be utilized easily to the machine and without any resistance. Hence the application is easy to install, learn and use.

Sufficient Testing

It is worth mentioning that testing should be maximum but not excessive. There is no point in pursuing cross-platform application if we know that the customer uses particular browser or operating system. A right balance between the maximum test coverage at minimal cost should be achieved.

Perfect testing means a right balance between the maximum test coverage at minimal cost.