Testing: Four Points You Have to Check Before Paying

3 min read

When most people think about Information Technology they usually mean software development, network maintenance or database administration activities. They usually forget about the mediator who is involved at every stage before the final product is sent to the client. This mediator is the test engineer.

Testing can be implemented in different ways, ranging from the single developer who verifies their own code, to a team of professionals that work with automated testing scripts and create specialized testing tools for specific needs.

When we talk about the objectives of good testing we usually take into account the following: discovery of any defects, gaining confidence in the overall quality of the product, providing information about performance specs, and suggesting solutions to potential shortcomings.

These are simple points, but to achieve them test engineers must:

  1. Know how to use a broad range of software testing techniques.
  2. Have high-level experience in test design, planning and execution, as well as implementation of audits and organizing reviews.
  3. Understand fundamental test terms and all of the norms and standards relevant to the tests.
  4. Be able to choose the optimum test tools and know what is important to keep in mind when using those diagnostic methods.

When you pay for software you definitely want to get a quality product. Of course, you can independently control processes in the company to assure product quality. But there is another way…

Vendors and the professional community have long recognized software testing as an integral part of the development and maintenance process. They have developed different certification programs for testing specialists to standardize knowledge and demonstrate experience in the process of software quality control, quality assurance, and testing tools.

Let’s suppose for a moment that you are a test engineer on a project developing a new system. Do you know how to start a test design for this system in case you have only screen images with comments that describe the number of fields and input ranges for the output range that depends on input, and the possible states associated with key objects managed by the system? Or another situation… If you have a special tool to run unit tests on code and this tool reports current test coverage and marks code sections that were not tested, do you know how to create additional tests for the uncovered portions? A certified test engineer knows.

A certified test team in the company means that your product was analyzed by a team of knowledgeable specialists and that the testing methods were complaint with established industry standards. Today ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) software tester certification is considered to be the global leading certification standard in software testing. Test professionals around the world have earned over 240,000 Foundation and Advanced Level certificates and that number continues to grow every day.

Additional details about the certification program are available on the ISTQB official pages: www.istqb.org

Devexperts is officially licensed by ISTQB to organize and run exams as well as issuing ISTQB certificates. For better details, please, contact us at istqb@devexperts.com