Definition: Testing is a process in which the defects are identified, isolated (separated), subject (sending) for rectification and ensured that the product is defect free in order to produce a quality product in the end and hence customer satisfactoion.
Reliability: The probability that software will not cause the failure of a system for a specified period of time under specified conditions
Defect: The departure of a quality characteristic from its specified value that results in a product or service not satisfying its normal usage requirements
Fault : A manifestation of an ERROR in software. Faults are also known colloquially as defaults or bugs. A fault , if encourage, may cause a failure which is a deviation of the software from its intended purpose.
Error : A human action that produces an incorrect result.
Quality : The totality of the characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.
Testing and Risk : How much would you be willing to perform if the risk of failure were negligible? Alternatively, how much testing would you be willing to perform if a single defect could cost you your life’s savings, or, even more significantly, your life?
Testing and Quality: Testing identifies faults whose removal increases the software quality by increasing the software’s potential reliability.
Testing is the measurement of software quality.
We measure how closely we have achieved quality by testing the relevant factors such as correctness, reliability, usability, maintainability, reusability, testability etc.
Failure – the act of a product not behaving as expected – the manifestation of a fault.
Validation – establishing the correspondence between the software and its specification – are we now building the correct product? Also known as ‘black box’ testing.
Verification – are we now building the product correctly? Also known as ‘white box testing’.
Test Case – the collection of inputs, predicted results and execution conditions for a single test
Pass/fail criteria – decision rules used to determine whether a product passes or fails a given test
Test suites – a collection of test cases necessary to “adequately” test a product
Test Plan– a document describing the scope, approach, resources and schedule of intended testing activity- identifies features to be testing tasks, who will do each task, and any risks requiring contingency planning.
Software Testing Inside and Out
The separation of debugging from testing was intially introduced by Glenford J. Myers in 1979. Although his attention was on breakage testing ‘a successful test is one that finds a bug.’
Historically there has not been a generally accepted set of testing definations.
Software Test Analyst 