Software testing series: Introduction

Software testing is a field that is so broad reaching that you can write hundreds of books about – and people have.

There are different techniques and different tools. New testing technologies are being created all the time.

There are a host of different goals – testing requirements, testing designs, testing data, testing implementations.

You can test functionality, test error messages, test user interface designs. You can check for spelling errors or broken links in webpages. You can test to make sure a server is online (we could have used that one this morning).

You can have manual tests, automated tests, tests by experts.

We can analyze the costs (and benefits) of testing. We can make our tests efficient to run, or focus on minimizing their maintenance costs. We can apply theory to identify what to test and use statistics to characterize the quality of software. We can try to understand where bugs come from.
In our series, we will touch on many of these topics and link to some of the better articles from experts out there.

There is also a foundation series post on black box and white box testing, and a foundation series post on unit testing software.
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Check out the index of software testing series posts for more articles.