Software testing

Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or
service under test.[1] Software testing also provides an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to
appreciate and understand the risks of software implementation. Test techniques include, but are not limited to, the process
of executing a program or application with the intent of finding software bugs (errors or other defects).

Software testing can also be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a software program/application/product:

1. meets the business and technical requirements that guided its design and development;
2. works as expected; and
3. can be implemented with the same characteristics.

Software testing, depending on the testing method employed, can be implemented at any time in the development process.
However, most of the test effort occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed.
As such, the methodology of the test is governed by the software development methodology adopted.

Different software development models will focus the test effort at different points in the development process. Newer
development models, such as Agile, often employ test driven development and place an increased portion of the testing in
the hands of the developer, before it reaches a formal team of testers. In a more traditional model, most of the test execution
occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed.

Contents
• 1 Overview
• 2 History
• 3 Software testing topics
o 3.1 Scope
o 3.2 Functional vs non-functional testing
o 3.3 Defects and failures
o 3.4 Finding faults early
o 3.5 Compatibility
o 3.6 Input combinations and preconditions
o 3.7 Static vs. dynamic testing
o 3.8 Software verification and validation
o 3.9 The software testing team
o 3.10 Software quality assurance (SQA)
• 4 Testing methods
o 4.1 The box approach
 4.1.1 White box testing
 4.1.2 Black box testing
 4.1.3 Grey box testing
• 5 Testing levels
o 5.1 Test target
 5.1.1 Unit testing
 5.1.2 Integration testing
 5.1.3 System testing
 5.1.4 System integration testing
o 5.2 Objectives of testing
 5.2.1 Regression testing
 5.2.2 Acceptance testing
 5.2.3 Alpha testing
 5.2.4 Beta testing
• 6 Non-functional testing
o 6.1 Software performance testing and load testing
o 6.2 Stability testing
o 6.3 Usability testing
o 6.4 Security testing

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 o 6.5 Internationalization and localization
o 6.6 Destructive testing
• 7 The testing process
o 7.1 Traditional CMMI or waterfall development model
o 7.2 Agile or Extreme development model
o 7.3 A sample testing cycle
• 8 Automated testing
o 8.1 Testing tools
o 8.2 Measurement in software testing
• 9 Testing artifacts
• 10 Certifications
• 11 Controversy
• 12 See also
• 13 References

• 14 External links

Overview
Testing can never completely identify all the defects within software. Instead, it furnishes a criticism or comparison that
compares the state and behavior of the product against oracles—principles or mechanisms by which someone might
recognize a problem. These oracles may include (but are not limited to) specifications, contracts,[2] comparable products, past
versions of the same product, inferences about intended or expected purpose, user or customer expectations, relevant
standards, applicable laws, or other criteria.

Every software product has a target audience. For example, the audience for video game software is completely different
from banking software. Therefore, when an organization develops or otherwise invests in a software product, it can assess
whether the software product will be acceptable to its end users, its target audience, its purchasers, and other stakeholders.
Software testing is the process of attempting to make this assessment.

A study conducted by NIST in 2002 reports that software bugs cost the U.S. economy $59.5 billion annually. More than a
third of this cost could be avoided if better software testing was performed.[3]

History
The separation of debugging from testing was initially introduced by Glenford J. Myers in 1979.[4] Although his attention
was on breakage testing ("a successful test is one that finds a bug"[4][5]) it illustrated the desire of the software engineering
community to separate fundamental development activities, such as debugging, from that of verification. Dave Gelperin and
William C. Hetzel classified in 1988 the phases and goals in software testing in the following stages:[6]

• Until 1956 - Debugging oriented[7]

• 1957–1978 - Demonstration oriented[8]
• 1979–1982 - Destruction oriented[9]
• 1983–1987 - Evaluation oriented[10]
• 1988–2000 - Prevention oriented[11]

Software testing topics

Scope

A primary purpose of testing is to detect software failures so that defects may be discovered and corrected. This is a non-
trivial pursuit. Testing cannot establish that a product functions properly under all conditions but can only establish that it
does not function properly under specific conditions.[12] The scope of software testing often includes examination of code as
well as execution of that code in various environments and conditions as well as examining the aspects of code: does it do
what it is supposed to do and do what it needs to do. In the current culture of software development, a testing organization
may be separate from the development team. There are various roles for testing team members. Information derived from
software testing may be used to correct the process by which software is developed.[13]
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Functional vs non-functional 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. Functional
tests tend to answer the question of "can the user do this" or "does this particular feature work".

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.

Defects and failures

Not all software defects are caused by coding errors. One common source of expensive defects is caused by requirement
gaps, e.g., unrecognized requirements, that result in errors of omission by the program designer. [14] A common source of
requirements gaps is non-functional requirements such as testability, scalability, maintainability, usability, performance, and
security.

Software faults occur through the following processes. A programmer makes an error (mistake), which results in a defect
(fault, bug) in the software source code. If this defect is executed, in certain situations the system will produce wrong results,
causing a failure.[15] Not all defects will necessarily result in failures. For example, defects in dead code will never result in
failures. A defect can turn into a failure when the environment is changed. Examples of these changes in environment
include the software being run on a new hardware platform, alterations in source data or interacting with different software.
[15]
A single defect may result in a wide range of failure symptoms.

Finding faults early

It is commonly believed that the earlier a defect is found the cheaper it is to fix it.[16] The following table shows the cost of
fixing the defect depending on the stage it was found.[17][not in citation given] For example, if a problem in the requirements is found
only post-release, then it would cost 10–100 times more to fix than if it had already been found by the requirements review.

Time detected
Cost to fix a defect
Requirements Architecture Construction System test Post-release
Requirements 1× 3× 5–10× 10× 10–100×
Time introduced Architecture - 1× 10× 15× 25–100×
Construction - - 1× 10× 10–25×

Compatibility

A common cause of software failure (real or perceived) is a lack of compatibility with other application software, operating
systems (or operating system versions, old or new), or target environments that differ greatly from the original (such as a
terminal or GUI application intended to be run on the desktop now being required to become a web application, which must
render in a web browser). For example, in the case of a lack of backward compatibility, this can occur because the
programmers develop and test software only on the latest version of the target environment, which not all users may be
running. This results in the unintended consequence that the latest work may not function on earlier versions of the target
environment, or on older hardware that earlier versions of the target environment was capable of using. Sometimes such
issues can be fixed by proactively abstracting operating system functionality into a separate program module or library.

Input combinations and preconditions

A very fundamental problem with software testing is that testing under all combinations of inputs and preconditions (initial
state) is not feasible, even with a simple product.[12][18] This means that the number of defects in a software product can be
very large and defects that occur infrequently are difficult to find in testing. More significantly, non-functional dimensions of
quality (how it is supposed to be versus what it is supposed to do)—usability, scalability, performance, compatibility,
reliability—can be highly subjective; something that constitutes sufficient value to one person may be intolerable to another.

Static vs. dynamic testing

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There are many approaches to software testing. Reviews, walkthroughs, or inspections are considered as static testing,
whereas actually executing programmed code with a given set of test cases is referred to as dynamic testing. Static testing
can be (and unfortunately in practice often is) omitted. Dynamic testing takes place when the program itself is used for the
first time (which is generally considered the beginning of the testing stage). Dynamic testing may begin before the program
is 100% complete in order to test particular sections of code (modules or discrete functions). Typical techniques for this are
either using stubs/drivers or execution from a debugger environment. For example, spreadsheet programs are, by their very
nature, tested to a large extent interactively ("on the fly"), with results displayed immediately after each calculation or text
manipulation.

Software verification and validation

Software testing is used in association with verification and validation:[19]

• Verification: Have we built the software right? (i.e., does it match the specification).
• Validation: Have we built the right software? (i.e., is this what the customer wants).

The terms verification and validation are commonly used interchangeably in the industry; it is also common to see these two
terms incorrectly defined. According to the IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology:

Verification is the process of evaluating a system or component to determine whether the products of a given
development phase satisfy the conditions imposed at the start of that phase.
Validation is the process of evaluating a system or component during or at the end of the development process to
determine whether it satisfies specified requirements.

The software testing team

Software testing can be done by software testers. Until the 1980s the term "software tester" was used generally, but later it
was also seen as a separate profession. Regarding the periods and the different goals in software testing,[20] different roles
have been established: manager, test lead, test designer, tester, automation developer, and test administrator.

Software quality assurance (SQA)

Though controversial, software testing is a part of the software quality assurance (SQA) process.[12] In SQA, software
process specialists and auditors are concerned for 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 amount of
faults that end up in the delivered software: the so-called defect rate.

What constitutes an "acceptable defect rate" depends on the nature of the software; A flight simulator video game would
have much higher defect tolerance than software for an actual airplane.

Although there are close links with SQA, testing departments often exist independently, and there may be no SQA function
in some companies.

Software testing is a task intended to detect defects in software by contrasting a computer program's expected results with its
actual results for a given set of inputs. By contrast, QA (quality assurance) is the implementation of policies and procedures
intended to prevent defects from occurring in the first place.

Testing methods
The box approach

Software testing methods are traditionally divided into white- and black-box testing. These two approaches are used to
describe the point of view that a test engineer takes when designing test cases.

White box testing

Main article: White box testing

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White box testing is when the tester has access to the internal data structures and algorithms including the code that
implement these.

Types of white box testing

The following types of white box testing exist:

• API testing (application programming interface) - testing of the application using public and private
APIs
• Code coverage - creating tests to satisfy some criteria of code coverage (e.g., the test designer can
create tests to cause all statements in the program to be executed at least once)
• Fault injection methods - improving the coverage of a test by introducing faults to test code paths
• Mutation testing methods
• Static testing - White box testing includes all static testing

Test coverage
White box testing methods can also be used to evaluate the completeness of a test suite that was created with black
box testing methods. This allows the software team to examine parts of a system that are rarely tested and ensures
that the most important function points have been tested.[21]
Two common forms of code coverage are:

• Function coverage, which reports on functions executed

• Statement coverage, which reports on the number of lines executed to complete the test

They both return a code coverage metric, measured as a percentage.

Black box testing

Main article: Black box testing

Black box testing treats the software as a "black box"—without any knowledge of internal implementation. Black box testing
methods include: equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, all-pairs testing, fuzz testing, model-based testing,
exploratory testing and specification-based testing.

Specification-based testing: Specification-based testing aims to test the functionality of software according to the
applicable requirements.[22] Thus, the tester inputs data into, and only sees the output from, the test object. This level
of testing usually requires thorough test cases to be provided to the tester, who then can simply verify that for a
given input, the output value (or behavior), either "is" or "is not" the same as the expected value specified in the test
case.
Specification-based testing is necessary, but it is insufficient to guard against certain risks.[23]
Advantages and disadvantages: The black box tester has no "bonds" with the code, and a tester's perception is very
simple: a code must have bugs. Using the principle, "Ask and you shall receive," black box testers find bugs where
programmers do not. On the other hand, black box testing has been said to be "like a walk in a dark labyrinth without
a flashlight," because the tester doesn't know how the software being tested was actually constructed. As a result,
there are situations when (1) a tester writes many test cases to check something that could have been tested by only
one test case, and/or (2) some parts of the back-end are not tested at all.

Therefore, black box testing has the advantage of "an unaffiliated opinion", on the one hand, and the disadvantage of "blind
exploring", on the other. [24]

Grey box testing

Grey box testing (American spelling: gray box testing) involves having knowledge of internal data structures and
algorithms for purposes of designing the test cases, but testing at the user, or black-box level. Manipulating input data and
formatting output do not qualify as grey box, because the input and output are clearly outside of the "black-box" that we are
calling the system under test. This distinction is particularly important when conducting integration testing between two
modules of code written by two different developers, where only the interfaces are exposed for test. However, modifying a
data repository does qualify as grey box, as the user would not normally be able to change the data outside of the system
under test. Grey box testing may also include reverse engineering to determine, for instance, boundary values or error
messages.
5
Testing levels
Tests are frequently grouped by where they are added in the software development process, or by the level of specificity of
the test. The main levels during the development process as defined by the SWEBOK guide are unit-, integration-, and
system testing that are distinguished by the test target without impliying a specific process model. [25] Other test levels are
classified by the testing objective.[26]

Test target

Unit testing

Main article: Unit testing

Unit testing refers to tests that verify the functionality of a specific section of code, usually at the function level. In an
object-oriented environment, this is usually at the class level, and the minimal unit tests include the constructors and
destructors.[27]

These type of tests are usually written by developers as they work on code (white-box style), to ensure that the specific
function is working as expected. One function might have multiple tests, to catch corner cases or other branches in the code.
Unit testing alone cannot verify the functionality of a piece of software, but rather is used to assure that the building blocks
the software uses work independently of each other.

Unit testing is also called component testing.

Integration testing

Main article: Integration testing

Integration testing is any type of software testing that seeks to verify the interfaces between components against a software
design. Software components may be integrated in an iterative way or all together ("big bang"). Normally the former is
considered a better practice since it allows interface issues to be localised more quickly and fixed.

Integration testing works to expose defects in the interfaces and interaction between integrated components (modules).
Progressively larger groups of tested software components corresponding to elements of the architectural design are
integrated and tested until the software works as a system.[28]

System testing

Main article: System testing

System testing tests a completely integrated system to verify that it meets its requirements.[29]

System integration testing

Main article: System integration testing

System integration testing verifies that a system is integrated to any external or third-party systems defined in the system
requirements.[citation needed]

Objectives of testing

Regression testing

Main article: Regression testing

Regression testing focuses on finding defects after a major code change has occurred. Specifically, it seeks to uncover
software regressions, or old bugs that have come back. Such regressions occur whenever software functionality that was

6
previously working correctly stops working as intended. Typically, regressions occur as an unintended consequence of
program changes, when the newly developed part of the software collides with the previously existing code. Common
methods of regression testing include re-running previously run tests and checking whether previously fixed faults have re-
emerged. The depth of testing depends on the phase in the release process and the risk of the added features. They can either
be complete, for changes added late in the release or deemed to be risky, to very shallow, consisting of positive tests on each
feature, if the changes are early in the release or deemed to be of low risk.

Acceptance testing

Main article: Acceptance testing

Acceptance testing can mean one of two things:

1. A smoke test is used as an acceptance test prior to introducing a new build to the main testing process, i.e. before
integration or regression.
2. Acceptance testing is performed by the customer, often in their lab environment on their own hardware, is known as
user acceptance testing (UAT). Acceptance testing may be performed as part of the hand-off process between any
two phases of development.[citation needed]

Alpha testing

Alpha testing is simulated or actual operational testing by potential users/customers or an independent test team at the
developers' site. Alpha testing is often employed for off-the-shelf software as a form of internal acceptance testing, before
the software goes to beta testing.[30]

Beta testing

Beta testing comes after alpha testing and can be considered a form of external user acceptance testing. Versions of the
software, known as beta versions, are released to a limited audience outside of the programming team. The software is
released to groups of people so that further testing can ensure the product has few faults or bugs. Sometimes, beta versions
are made available to the open public to increase the feedback field to a maximal number of future users.[citation needed]

Non-functional testing
Special methods exist to test non-functional aspects of software. In contrast to functional testing, which establishes the
correct operation of the software (correct in that it matches the expected behavior defined in the design requirements), non-
functional testing verifies that the software functions properly even when it receives invalid or unexpected inputs. Software
fault injection, in the form of fuzzing, is an example of non-functional testing. Non-functional testing, especially for
software, is designed to establish whether the device under test can tolerate invalid or unexpected inputs, thereby
establishing the robustness of input validation routines as well as error-handling routines. Various commercial non-
functional testing tools are linked from the software fault injection page; there are also numerous open-source and free
software tools available that perform non-functional testing.

Software performance testing and load testing

Performance testing is executed to determine how fast a system or sub-system performs under a particular workload. It can
also serve to validate and verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage.
Load testing is primarily concerned with testing that can continue to operate under a specific load, whether that be large
quantities of data or a large number of users. This is generally referred to as software scalability. The related load testing
activity of when performed as a non-functional activity is often referred to as endurance testing.

Volume testing is a way to test functionality. Stress testing is a way to test reliability. Load testing is a way to test
performance. There is little agreement on what the specific goals of load testing are. The terms load testing, performance
testing, reliability testing, and volume testing, are often used interchangeably.

Stability testing

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Stability testing checks to see if the software can continuously function well in or above an acceptable period. This activity
of non-functional software testing is often referred to as load (or endurance) testing.

Usability testing

Usability testing is needed to check if the user interface is easy to use and understand. It is concerned mainly with the use of
the application.

Security testing

Security testing is essential for software that processes confidential data to prevent system intrusion by hackers.

Internationalization and localization

The general ability of software to be internationalized and localized can be automatically tested without actual translation, by
using pseudolocalization. It will verify that the application still works, even after it has been translated into a new language
or adapted for a new culture (such as different currencies or time zones).[31]

Actual translation to human languages must be tested, too. Possible localization failures include:

• Software is often localized by translating a list of strings out of context, and the translator may choose the wrong
translation for an ambiguous source string.
• Technical terminology may become inconsistent if the project is translated by several people without proper
coordination or if the translator is imprudent.
• Literal word-for-word translations may sound inappropriate, artificial or too technical in the target language.
• Untranslated messages in the original language may be left hard coded in the source code.
• Some messages may be created automatically in run time and the resulting string may be ungrammatical,
functionally incorrect, misleading or confusing.
• Software may use a keyboard shortcut which has no function on the source language's keyboard layout, but is used
for typing characters in the layout of the target language.
• Software may lack support for the character encoding of the target language.
• Fonts and font sizes which are appropriate in the source language, may be inappropriate in the target language; for
example, CJK characters may become unreadable if the font is too small.
• A string in the target language may be longer than the software can handle. This may make the string partly invisible
to the user or cause the software to crash or malfunction.
• Software may lack proper support for reading or writing bi-directional text.
• Software may display images with text that wasn't localized.
• Localized operating systems may have differently-named system configuration files and environment variables and
different formats for date and currency.

To avoid these and other localization problems, a tester who knows the target language must run the program with all the
possible use cases for translation to see if the messages are readable, translated correctly in context and don't cause failures.

Destructive testing

Main article: Destructive testing

Destructive testing attempts to cause the software or a sub-system to fail, in order to test its robustness.

The testing process

Traditional CMMI or waterfall development model

A common practice of software testing is that testing is performed by an independent group of testers after the functionality
is developed, before it is shipped to the customer.[32] This practice often results in the testing phase being used as a project
buffer to compensate for project delays, thereby compromising the time devoted to testing.[33]

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Another practice is to start software testing at the same moment the project starts and it is a continuous process until the
project finishes.[34]

Further information: Capability Maturity Model Integration and Waterfall model

Agile or Extreme development model

In counterpoint, some emerging software disciplines such as extreme programming and the agile software development
movement, adhere to a "test-driven software development" model. In this process, unit tests are written first, by the software
engineers (often with pair programming in the extreme programming methodology). Of course these tests fail initially; as
they are expected to. Then as code is written it passes incrementally larger portions of the test suites. The test suites are
continuously updated as new failure conditions and corner cases are discovered, and they are integrated with any regression
tests that are developed. Unit tests are maintained along with the rest of the software source code and generally integrated
into the build process (with inherently interactive tests being relegated to a partially manual build acceptance process). The
ultimate goal of this test process is to achieve continuous deployment where software updates can be published to the public
frequently. [35] [36]

A sample testing cycle

Although variations exist between organizations, there is a typical cycle for testing.[37] The sample below is common among
organizations employing the Waterfall development model.

• Requirements analysis: Testing should begin in the requirements phase of the software development life cycle.
During the design phase, testers work with developers in determining what aspects of a design are testable and with
what parameters those tests work.
• Test planning: Test strategy, test plan, testbed creation. Since many activities will be carried out during testing, a
plan is needed.
• Test development: Test procedures, test scenarios, test cases, test datasets, test scripts to use in testing software.
• Test execution: Testers execute the software based on the plans and test documents then report any errors found to
the development team.
• Test reporting: Once testing is completed, testers generate metrics and make final reports on their test effort and
whether or not the software tested is ready for release.
• Test result analysis: Or Defect Analysis, is done by the development team usually along with the client, in order to
decide what defects should be treated, fixed, rejected (i.e. found software working properly) or deferred to be dealt
with later.
• Defect Retesting: Once a defect has been dealt with by the development team, it is retested by the testing team.
AKA Resolution testing.
• Regression testing: It is common to have a small test program built of a subset of tests, for each integration of new,
modified, or fixed software, in order to ensure that the latest delivery has not ruined anything, and that the software
product as a whole is still working correctly.
• Test Closure: Once the test meets the exit criteria, the activities such as capturing the key outputs, lessons learned,
results, logs, documents related to the project are archived and used as a reference for future projects.

Automated testing
Main article: Test automation

Many programming groups are relying more and more on automated testing, especially groups that use test-driven
development. There are many frameworks to write tests in, and continuous integration software will run tests automatically
every time code is checked into a version control system.

While automation cannot reproduce everything that a human can do (and all the ways they think of doing it), it can be very
useful for regression testing. However, it does require a well-developed test suite of testing scripts in order to be truly useful.

Testing tools

Program testing and fault detection can be aided significantly by testing tools and debuggers. Testing/debug tools include
features such as:
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 • Program monitors, permitting full or partial monitoring of program code including:
o Instruction set simulator, permitting complete instruction level monitoring and trace facilities
o Program animation, permitting step-by-step execution and conditional breakpoint at source level or in
machine code
o Code coverage reports
• Formatted dump or symbolic debugging, tools allowing inspection of program variables on error or at chosen points
• Automated functional GUI testing tools are used to repeat system-level tests through the GUI
• Benchmarks, allowing run-time performance comparisons to be made
• Performance analysis (or profiling tools) that can help to highlight hot spots and resource usage

Some of these features may be incorporated into an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

• A regression testing technique is to have a standard set of tests, which cover existing functionality that result in
persistent tabular data, and to compare pre-change data to post-change data, where there should not be differences,
using a tool like diffkit. Differences detected indicate unexpected functionality changes or "regression".

Measurement in software testing

Usually, quality is constrained to such topics as correctness, completeness, security,[citation needed] but can also include more
technical requirements as described under the ISO standard ISO/IEC 9126, such as capability, reliability, efficiency,
portability, maintainability, compatibility, and usability.

There are a number of frequently-used software measures, often called metrics, which are used to assist in determining the
state of the software or the adequacy of the testing.

Testing artifacts
Software testing process can produce several artifacts.

Test plan
A test specification is called a test plan. The developers are well aware what test plans will be executed and this
information is made available to management and the developers. The idea is to make them more cautious when
developing their code or making additional changes. Some companies have a higher-level document called a test
strategy.
Traceability matrix
A traceability matrix is a table that correlates requirements or design documents to test documents. It is used to
change tests when the source documents are changed, or to verify that the test results are correct.
Test case
A test case normally consists of a unique identifier, requirement references from a design specification,
preconditions, events, a series of steps (also known as actions) to follow, input, output, expected result, and actual
result. Clinically defined a test case is an input and an expected result. [38] This can be as pragmatic as 'for condition x
your derived result is y', whereas other test cases described in more detail the input scenario and what results might
be expected. It can occasionally be a series of steps (but often steps are contained in a separate test procedure that
can be exercised against multiple test cases, as a matter of economy) but with one expected result or expected
outcome. The optional fields are a test case ID, test step, or order of execution number, related requirement(s), depth,
test category, author, and check boxes for whether the test is automatable and has been automated. Larger test cases
may also contain prerequisite states or steps, and descriptions. A test case should also contain a place for the actual
result. These steps can be stored in a word processor document, spreadsheet, database, or other common repository.
In a database system, you may also be able to see past test results, who generated the results, and what system
configuration was used to generate those results. These past results would usually be stored in a separate table.
Test script
The test script is procedure, or a programing code that replicate the user actions. Initially the term was derived from
the product of work created by automated regression test tools. Test Case will be a baseline to create test scripts
using a tool or a program.
Test suite
The most common term for a collection of test cases is a test suite. The test suite often also contains more detailed
instructions or goals for each collection of test cases. It definitely contains a section where the tester identifies the
system configuration used during testing. A group of test cases may also contain prerequisite states or steps, and
descriptions of the following tests.
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Test data
In most cases, multiple sets of values or data are used to test the same functionality of a particular feature. All the
test values and changeable environmental components are collected in separate files and stored as test data. It is also
useful to provide this data to the client and with the product or a project.
Test harness
The software, tools, samples of data input and output, and configurations are all referred to collectively as a test
harness.

Certifications
Several certification programs exist to support the professional aspirations of software testers and quality assurance
specialists. No certification currently offered actually requires the applicant to demonstrate the ability to test software. No
certification is based on a widely accepted body of knowledge. This has led some to declare that the testing field is not ready
for certification.[39] Certification itself cannot measure an individual's productivity, their skill, or practical knowledge, and
cannot guarantee their competence, or professionalism as a tester.[40]

Software testing certification types

• Exam-based: Formalized exams, which need to be passed; can also be learned by self-study [e.g., for
ISTQB or QAI][41]
• Education-based: Instructor-led sessions, where each course has to be passed [e.g., International
Institute for Software Testing (IIST)].

Testing certifications

• Certified Associate in Software Testing (CAST) offered by the Quality Assurance Institute (QAI)[42]
• CATe offered by the International Institute for Software Testing[43]
• Certified Manager in Software Testing (CMST) offered by the Quality Assurance Institute (QAI)[42]
• Certified Software Tester (CSTE) offered by the Quality Assurance Institute (QAI)[42]
• Certified Software Test Professional (CSTP) offered by the International Institute for Software
Testing[43]
• CSTP (TM) (Australian Version) offered by K. J. Ross & Associates[44]
• ISEB offered by the Information Systems Examinations Board
• ISTQB Certified Tester, Foundation Level (CTFL) offered by the International Software Testing
Qualification Board [45][46]
• ISTQB Certified Tester, Advanced Level (CTAL) offered by the International Software Testing
Qualification Board [45][46]
• TMPF TMap Next Foundation offered by the Examination Institute for Information Science[47]
• TMPA TMap Next Advanced offered by the Examination Institute for Information Science[47]

Quality assurance certifications

• CMSQ offered by the Quality Assurance Institute (QAI).[42]

• CSQA offered by the Quality Assurance Institute (QAI)[42]
• CSQE offered by the American Society for Quality (ASQ)[48]
• CQIA offered by the American Society for Quality (ASQ)[48]

Controversy
Some of the major software testing controversies include:

What constitutes responsible software testing?

Members of the "context-driven" school of testing[49] believe that there are no "best practices" of testing, but rather
that testing is a set of skills that allow the tester to select or invent testing practices to suit each unique situation.[50]
Agile vs. traditional
Should testers learn to work under conditions of uncertainty and constant change or should they aim at process
"maturity"? The agile testing movement has received growing popularity since 2006 mainly in commercial circles, [51]

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 [52]
whereas government and military[53] software providers use this methodology but also the traditional test-last
models (e.g. in the Waterfall model).[citation needed]
Exploratory test vs. scripted[54]
Should tests be designed at the same time as they are executed or should they be designed beforehand?
Manual testing vs. automated
Some writers believe that test automation is so expensive relative to its value that it should be used sparingly. [55]
More in particular, test-driven development states that developers should write unit-tests of the XUnit type before
coding the functionality. The tests then can be considered as a way to capture and implement the requirements.
Software design vs. software implementation[56]
Should testing be carried out only at the end or throughout the whole process?
Who watches the watchmen?
The idea is that any form of observation is also an interaction—the act of testing can also affect that which is being
tested.[57]

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