| This book is designed to lead you through the essential knowledge and skills necessary to become a good software tester. Software testing is not about banging on the keyboard hoping you'll eventually crash the computer. A great deal of science and engineering is behind it, lots of discipline and planning, and there can be lots of fun, tooas you'll soon see. Part I: The Big Picture The chapters in Part I lay the foundation for this book by showing you how software products are developed and how software testing fits into the overall development process. You'll see the importance of software testing and gain an appreciation for the magnitude of the job. Chapter 1, "Software Testing Background," helps you understand exactly what a software bug is, how serious they can be, and why they occur. You'll learn what your ultimate goal is as a software tester and what traits will help make you a good one. Chapter 2, "The Software Development Process," gives you an overview of how a software product is created in the corporate world. You'll learn what components typically go into software, what types of people contribute to it, and the different process models that can be used. Chapter 3, "The Realities of Software Testing," brings a reality check to how software is developed. You'll see why no matter how hard you try, software can never be perfect. You'll also learn a few fundamental terms and concepts used throughout the rest of this book.
Part II: Testing Fundamentals The chapters in Part II teach you the fundamental approaches to software testing. The work of testing software is divided into four basic areas, and you will see the techniques used for each one: Chapter 4, "Examining the Specification," teaches you how to find bugs by carefully inspecting the documentation that describes what the software is intended to do. Chapter 5, "Testing the Software with Blinders On," teaches you the techniques to use for testing software without having access to the code or even knowing how to program. This is the most common type of testing. Chapter 6, "Examining the Code," shows you how to perform detailed analysis of the program's source code to find bugs. You'll learn that you don't have to be an expert programmer to use these techniques. Chapter 7, "Testing the Software with X-Ray Glasses," teaches you how you can improve your testing by leveraging information you gain by reviewing the code or being able to see it execute while you run your tests.
Part III: Applying Your Testing Skills The chapters in Part III take the techniques that you learned in Part II and apply them to some real-world scenarios that you'll encounter as a software tester: Chapter 8, "Configuration Testing," teaches you how to organize and perform software testing on different hardware configurations and platforms. Chapter 9, "Compatibility Testing," teaches you how to test for issues with different software applications and operating systems interacting with each other. Chapter 10, "Foreign-Language Testing," shows you that a whole world of software is out there and that it's important to test for the special problems that can arise when software is translated into other languages. Chapter 11, "Usability Testing," teaches you how to apply your testing skills when checking a software application's user interface and how to assure that your software is accessible to the disabled. Chapter 12, "Testing the Documentation," explains how to examine the software's documentation such as help files, user manuals, even the marketing material, for bugs. Chapter 13, "Testing for Software Security," shows you how to find bugs that allow hackers to gain access to (supposedly) secure computer systems and data. Chapter 14, "Website Testing," takes everything you've learned so far and applies it to a present-day situation. You'll see how something as simple as testing a website can encompass nearly all aspects of software testing.
Part IV: Supplementing Your Testing The chapters in Part IV show you how to improve your test coverage and capability by leveraging both technology and people to perform your testing more efficiently and effectively: Chapter 15, "Automated Testing and Test Tools," explains how you can use computers and software to test other software. You'll learn several different methods for automating your tests and using tools. You'll also learn why using technology isn't foolproof. Chapter 16, "Bug Bashes and Beta Testing," shows you how to use other people to see the software differently and to find bugs that you completely overlooked.
Part V: Working with Test Documentation The chapters in Part V cover how software testing is documented so that its plans, bugs, and results can be seen and understood by everyone on the project team: Chapter 17, "Planning Your Test Effort," shows you what goes into creating a test plan for your project. As a new software tester, you likely won't write a test plan from scratch, but it's important to know what's in one and why. Chapter 18, "Writing and Tracking Test Cases," teaches you how to properly document the test cases you develop so that you and other testers can use them. Chapter 19, "Reporting What You Find," teaches you how to tell the world when you find a bug, how to isolate the steps necessary to make it recur, and how to describe it so that others will understand and want to fix it. Chapter 20, "Measuring Your Success," describes various types of data, charts, and graphs used to gauge both your progress and success at testing and your software project's steps toward release.
Part VI: The Future The chapters in Part VI explain where the future lies in software testing and set the stage for your career: Chapter 21, "Software Quality Assurance," teaches you the big difference between software testing and quality assurance. You'll learn about different software industry goals such as ISO 9000 and the Capabilities Maturity Model and what it takes to achieve them. Chapter 22, "Your Career as a Software Tester," gives you that kick in the behind to go out and be a software tester. You'll learn what types of jobs are available and where to look for them. You'll also find many pointers to more information.
Appendix Each chapter in this book ends with a short quiz where you can try out the testing concepts that you learn. The answers appear in Appendix A, "Answers to Quiz Questions." |
