What is independent testing? It’s benefits and risks

The degree of independence avoids author bias and is often more effective at finding defects and failures.

There is several level of independence which is listed here from the lowest level of independence to the highest:
i. Tests by the person who wrote the item.
ii. Tests by another person within the same team, like another programmer.
iii.Tests by the person from some different group such as an independent test team.
iv.Tests by a person from a different organization or company, such as outsourced testing or certification by an external body.

When we think about how independent the test team is? It is really very important to understand that independence is not an either/or condition, but a range:

• At one end of the range lies the absence of independence, where the programmer performs testing within the programming team.
• Moving toward independence, we find an integrated tester or group of testers working alongside the programmers, but still within and reporting to the development manager.
• Then moving little bit more towards independence we might find a team of testers who are independent and outside the development team, but reporting to project management.
• Near the other end of the continuum lies complete independence. We might see a separate test team reporting into the organization at a point equal to the development or project team. We might find specialists in the business domain (such as users of the system), specialists in technology (such as database experts), and specialists in testing (such as security testers, certification testers, or test automation experts) in a separate test team, as part of a larger independent test team, or as part of a contract, outsourced test team.

Benefits of independence testing:

• An independent tester can repeatedly find out more, other, and different defects than a tester working within a programming team – or a tester who is by profession a programmer.
• While business analysts, marketing staff, designers, and programmers bring their own assumptions to the specification and implementation of the item under test, an independent tester brings a different set of assumptions to testing and to reviews, which often helps in exposing the hidden defects and problems
• An independent tester who reports to senior management can report his results honestly and without any concern for reprisal that might result from pointing out problems in coworkers’ or, worse yet, the manager’s work.
• An independent test team often has a separate budget, which helps ensure the proper level of money is spent on tester training, testing tools, test equipment, etc.
• In addition, in some organizations, testers in an independent test team may find it easier to have a career path that leads up into more senior roles in testing.

Risks of independence and integrated testing:

• There is a possibility that the testers and the test team can get isolated. This can take the form of interpersonal isolation from the programmers, the designers, and the project team itself, or it can take the form of isolation from the broader view of quality and the business objectives (e.g., obsessive focus on defects, often accompanied by a refusal to accept business prioritization of defects).
• This leads to communication problems, feelings of unfriendliness and hostility.
• Lack of identification with and support for the project goals, spontaneous blame festivals and political backstabbing.
• Even well-integrated test teams can suffer problems. Other project stakeholders might come to see the independent test team – rightly or wrongly – as a bottleneck and a source of delay. Some programmers give up their responsibility for quality, saying, ‘Well, we have this test team now, so why do I need to unit test my code?’

Quality software is reasonably bug or defect free, delivered on time and within budget, meets requirements and/or expectations, and is maintainable.

ISO 8402-1986 standard defines quality as  “the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.”
Key aspects of quality for the customer include:

• Good design – looks and style
• Good functionality – it does the job well
• Reliable – acceptable level of breakdowns or failure
• Consistency
• Durable – lasts as long as it should
• Good after sales service
• Value for money

Good design – looks and style:
It is very important to have a good design. The application or product should meet all the requirement specifications and at the same time it should be user friendly. The customers are basically attracted by the good looks and style of the application. The right color combinations, font size and the styling of the texts and buttons are very important.

Good functionality – it does the job well:
Along with the good looks of the application or the product it’s very important that the functionality should be intact. All the features and their functionality should work as expected. There should not be any deviation in the actual result and the expected result.

Reliable – acceptable level of breakdowns or failure:
After we have tested for all the features and their functionalities it also very important that the application or product should be reliable. For example: There is an application of saving the students records. This application should save all the students records and should not fail after entering 100 records. This is called reliability.

Consistency:
The software should have consistency across the application or product. Single software can be multi dimensional. It is very important that all the different dimensions should behave in a consistent manner.

Durable – lasts as long as it should:
The software should be durable. For example if software is being used for a year and the number of data has exceed 5000 records then it should not fail if number of records increases. The software product or application should continue to behave in the same way without any functional breaks.

Good after sales service:
Once the product is shipped to the customers then maintenance comes into the picture. It is very important to provide good sales services to keep the customers happy and satisfied. For example if after using the product for six months the customer realizes to make some changes to the application then those changes should be done as fast as possible and should be delivered to the customers on time with quality.

Value for money:
It’s always important to deliver the product to the customers which have value for money. The product should meet the requirement specifications. It should work as expected, should be user friendly. We should provide good services to the customers. Other than the features mentioned in the requirement specifications some additional functionality could be given to the customers which they might not have thought of. These additional functio nalities should make their product more user friendly and easy to use. This also adds value for money.