Too often formal testing is a step missing in a software development firm's workflow. Features are developed and run through a cursory examination by a developer or supervisor and are subsequently released to a production environment. The peril in this approach is the potential to build a house of cards where new functionality changes your product and previous development is broken.
Consider a non-programming example:
An accountant for a small business is used to receiving an itemized list of expenses from a given company's sales representatives. These expenses are entered into the company's books for reimbursement and tax purposes. Of course this doesn't suffice as proof that the expense is genuine. So the business mandates that physical receipts must be delivered to the accountant along with the list of expenses. This improvement in process makes the accountant's work easier and becomes the new standard for the expense process.
One sales representative happened to be on vacation when the new procedure was adopted. Upon this representative's return, as usual, they began to submit the old list of business expenses to the accountant. The accountant isn't receiving the correct and complete information from this representative, so processing the sales representative's expenses is delayed. Luckily, the accountant is intelligent enough to explain the new procedure to the sales representative, and the new process is set into motion.
The players in this example are analogous to potential pieces in a software system. The accountant is like a class or library that is called upon by salespeople, who would represent other classes or functions. If you change the accounting class there is a potential that older, less recently maintained functions will not communicate with the class correctly. The problem is that unlike people, software is usually less forgiving when communication does not adhere to a protocol.
Here is where testing becomes part of the solution:
Web application developers need automated internal and external testing in place as part of their workflow. With each product release old and new functionality need to be tested against the design specifications under which they were developed.
A well designed testing program is insurance that the next release is not deployed with broken features that your customers rely upon. A well designed testing routine furthers the development of clear and concise documentation of the product. Both of these benefits cut down on the amount of time that your organization has to support its clients. That saves your business time and money in the long run.
Why you should hire Capital Technology Services for web application testing:
- We have 10 years of web-application development experience.
- It is beneficial to have a third party, outside of the development team, reviewing the quality of a product.
- Testing has become cost and time prohibitive with your current resources.