Manual Testing

Whenever a software is created it is first tested by a software testing engineer for all the potential problems that a user may experience. Testers look at the software as if they are the end users and check how feasible it would be to launch the software in the market. There are various manual testing tutorials which help one in knowing a good deal about the various manual testing concepts.

Manual Testing FAQs

1. What do you mean by software testing?
   Software testing involves checking the operation of a software/application and evaluating the results. The main aim of software testing is to check for the errors if any, before the application is made available to the users.
2. Why do we need to carry out manual testing?
   Manual testing is carried out to know the expected performance of the system. It can be thought of as a demo which is conducted to rectify the errors.
3. What is the difference between 'verification' and 'validation'?
   Verification of the system means that the purpose for which the application was established has been thoroughly checked and it satisfies all the requirements, whereas validation on the other hand checks for the intended behavior of the system. Validation takes place after verification.
4. What do you mean by a walk-through?
   Walk-through is the process in which the software code is inspected by following a set path through the code so as to ensure that it satisfies all the requirements.
5. What is meant by bidirectional traceability?
   As the name suggests, bidirectional traceability is the ability to trace the end products from the requirements and vice-versa.
6. What do you mean by internationalization testing?
   Internationalized testing is the process of creating a software which is free of all the cultural norms, language and can be used universally.
7. What is black box and white box testing?
   Black box testing is usually carried out to test the functionality (or the external appearance to the user) of the software. A tester rather than concentrating on the internal structure, or programming language used, tests the functionality of the product against specifications and requirements provided. White box testing ignores functionality and concentrates on the internal structure of the software. It analyze a software's performance by testing it for the accuracy of the program control flow, data flow etc.
8. What is the difference between testing and debugging?
   Testing is the process of finding the errors in the program. A tester is mainly concerned with highlighting the errors. A debugger on the other hand has the responsibility of checking the errors as well as fixing them. Debugging is usually carried out by the debugging team.
9. What is the difference between volume and load?
   Volume testing is carried out to check if the system behaves as expected in case of large number of data in the database. Load testing on the other hand checks the performance of the system when the load (files) is increased substantially.
10. What is a test case?
    A test case is a set of variables or conditions that are used to determine the efficiency of a system or a program. In order to verify that the application satisfies all the requirements, there should be at least two test cases for every requirement. It helps a user to get some information on product validation.
11. What are release notes used for?
    A release note is a document which is released along with the product and informs a user about the product.
12. What do you understand by software readability?
    Software readability is a measure of the efficiency of a program. It is described as the amount of time the software will work without failure/breakdown. It is measured in terms of Mean Time Between Failure. For example, if the MTBT of a program is 100, it means that the software should work without developing any snags for close to about 100 hours.
13. Explain alpha, beta and recovery testing.
    Alpha testing is carried out by a client using a dummy data whereas in beta testing, the client tests the real data. Alpha testing is carried out at the developer's site to identify all the potential issues before releasing the product to the customers. In Beta testing, the software is sent outside the company to a select group of people or to general public so that maximum feedback is derived before launching the software in the market. The bugs that are identified in the alpha stage are removed and then the software is passed on to the beta testing. In case some bugs are still identified during beta testing, corrective measures are taken to remove these bugs and then the software is made available to the users. Recovery testing gives a tester an idea about how well a system recovers in case of a crash or a hardware failure.