A Software Test Lab: The Place Where the Testing Takes Place

Software test labs work in conjunction with companies/ organizations that are using their software. They test the software to ensure that it passes all the required tests before it is released in the market for use or sale to the public. Very often the individual software testers find themselves with a large backlog of software requiring testing and these testers subcontract the testing to software labs.

The role of a software tester is just not to merely run the software to see its correctness of operation. He has to perform a number of complex and intricate tests on the application to find out whether the performance of the software is as per requirements specification. One such test is known as application compatibility test. The objective of this test is to find out whether this software is able to run with other applications at the same time. It has been observed that a software running well as a standalone fails to function when another application is installed in the system. Another such test is capacity and load testing in which the lab technicians test the software under heavy load/ workflow to find out whether any problem occurs while running it.

A number of technicians in the software test lab will be working simultaneously on different aspects of the software. The companies outsource their software testing requirements to these labs in order to get the testing done early. One of the important tests to be done on the software is network testing wherein the tester tests the compatibility of the software with the web server. Compatibility testing is to evaluate the application compatibility with the computing environment like operating system, database, browser compatibility, backwards compatibility, computing capacity of the hardware platform and compatibility of the peripherals. The software labs also conduct functionality and performance tests on the software. The functional testing is a “black box” testing where the tester verifies the functional specification. Main objective of performance testing is to get information with respect to response time, throughput and utilization under a given load.

Nowadays one comes across the misdeeds of hackers and crackers who breach the security of many organizations thereby getting access to the internals of organization data including finances. This might result in data theft. Further, new viruses crop up on a daily basis which affects the computer operations badly. Because of these reasons the security aspect has to be considered on top priority than all other things involved in computers and computer software. The lab technicians do the security testing also. In addition, the technicians conduct onsite performance test to ensure the working of software at the user’s location. The technicians in the software labs are highly qualified to do the testing. This will enable them to complete the tasks quickly and efficiently thereby saving cost and time.