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Software testing is inferior to development is a myth

As a test engineer, you play an important role in ensuring that the final software application or product meets the desired quality standards, and the success or failure of the application or product largely depends on its quality

Idhries Ahmad

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

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CIOL: How often do you come across Indian software developers with domain expertise in open source development and how do you rate them with global software community

LRV: The Indian software industry is probably one of the world's largest consumers of open source software. This indicates the acceptance of open source code as a normal way of life. However, the irony is that India's contribution to the development of open source software is very limited. This is not due to lack of knowledge or capability, but is mostly due to the limited value attributed to contributing to open source.

The problem starts with our education system that focuses on creating employable graduates without encouraging creativity among the students. Another reason is that majority of the developers consider programming as a job to be done for earning money rather than taking up programming as their passion. However, the good news is that this is changing, and the Indian developer is starting to realize the importance of contributing back to the community.

Luckily, this trend is here to stay and we will definitely see some great contributions from India towards Open Source software development.

CIOL: Coming to testing domain itself, can you brief us about the latest methodologies and frameworks, that you are seeing in the software testing practice domain?

LRV: Changes in technology and lifecycle methodologies have contributed to testing evolving from tactical, pure manual testing to an activity that is much more strategic and critical for project success.

With new technologies, like Web 2.0, SOA and SaaS, and methodologies like Agile and Test Driven Development (TDD), it is essential that software testing evolve to keep up. Further, consolidation of IT services and competitive forces have resulted in testing organizations relying on building frameworks and solution accelerators. These frameworks and accelerators help improve productivity, enhance quality and improve overall test effectiveness.

CIOL: And how important role does software testing lifecycle play in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)?

LRV: Software testing is an integral part of SDLC and occupies a similar position as any other component of the SDLC. Software testing aims at detecting defects that can result in failures; the consequences of such failures can include loss of customers, increased cost of maintenance, financial losses, or in some extreme cases, loss of human life.

History is replete with multiple examples (e.g.: the Terminal 5 fiasco in Heathrow's airport that resulted in losses of £16m for British Airways in the first five days of operation, or the Ariane 5 Flight 501 failure) that demonstrate the consequences if software testing is compromised.

CIOL: Coming back to Virtusa, can you brief about Virtusa's expertise in Software testing domain?

LRV: Virtusa is a leading provider of software testing services, with significant industry and domain expertise across Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Telecommunications, Media & Information and Health care. Our rich heritage of more than 11 years of delivering software solutions also includes providing testing services to fortune 500 clients, large enterprises and ISVs.

Our global testing pool of more than 1100 testing resources consists of high-end resources that are certified (testing specific, domain specific and tool specific certifications). Consolidating our experience, we have developed proprietary testing solutions and frameworks that provide significant benefits to our clients.

Backed by our unique frameworks and testing solutions, we offer expertise in the areas of Internationalization testing, Data warehouse testing, Certification testing, Security testing, Core performance testing and performance engineering, test automation, usability testing, data migration testing, functional testing services and test consultancy services that includes test process improvement services.

In addition, Virtusa offers unique solutions for testing Content Management (Vignette) and Business Process Management (Pegasystems) implementations. Our integrated test facility, or ITF, is a focal point for conducting performance testing, security testing and SOA based testing. Additionally, for some of our enterprise clients, we have set up unique testing CoEs that provides a self-sustaining ecosystem.

CIOL: What is Virtusa's dedicated software testing practice all about and please detail us about the latest developments in functional Testing, test automation, performance testing, specialized testing and test consultancy

LRV: Following a natural evolution, Virtusa has set up a dedicated software testing practice, called "STeP". The practice has a keen focus on delivery assurance (DA) and delivery support (DS). As part of the DA and DS functions, the practice supports delivery teams in test planning, creating the test strategy and performing reviews.

Practice team members who are specialists in different areas like test automation, performance testing, and security testing, work closely with the delivery teams to ensure that tests are of top quality. Our testing practice also owns the responsibility to identify and develop test frameworks, solution accelerators, enhance people competency by conducting need-based training and helping resources get certified.

Today, functional testing, unlike in the earlier years, is more than just testing the application functionality for stated requirements. As part of functional test strategy, Virtusa adopts a systematic approach of creating and executing tests that are based on end-to-end (E2E) user scenarios, and on testing to validate customer experience (including usability and user experience). Our test automation services provide automated testing using different tools, including the use of open source tools like Selenium. Leveraging our depth and breadth of experience across domains, we have created test automation frameworks which have helped our customers reduce their test automation costs and efforts.

©CIOL Bureau

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harish said on 2/4/2009 10:15:15 AM:
Tanya..the author now where says that.. what he means to say is....both are vital and equal in their importance

to harish

Tanya said on 1/7/2009 3:49:43 PM:
Does it mean software development is superior?

to Tanya

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