Potential Benefits of Using Testing Tools in Software Testing.

 

Potential Benefits of Using Tools:

There are many benefits that can be gained by using tools to support testing, whatever the specific  type of tool. Benefits include:

1.  reduction of repetitive work;
2.  greater consistency and repeatability;
3. objective assessment;
4. ease of access to information about tests or testing.

Repetitive work is tedious to do manually. People become bored and make mistakes when doing the same task over and over. 

Examples of this type of repetitive work include running regression tests, entering the same test data over and over again (both of which can be done test execution tool), checking against coding standards (which can be done by a static analysis tool) or creating a specific test database (which can be done by a test data preparation tool).

People tend to do the same task in a slightly different way even when they think they are ting something exactly. A tool will exactly reproduce what it did before; so, each time it the result is consistent.

 Examples of where this aspect is beneficial include checking to firm the correctness of a fix to a defect (which can be done by a debugging tool or test execution tool), entering test inputs (which can be done by a test execution tool) and generating tests from requirements (which can be done by a test design tool or possibly requirements management tool).

If a person calculates a value from the software or incident reports, they may advertently omit something, or their own subjective prejudices may lead them to interpret data incorrectly. Using a tool means that subjective bias is removed and the assessment repeatable and consistently calculated. 

Examples include assessing the cyclomatic complexity or nesting levels of a component (which can be done by a static analysis tool),  (coverage measurement tool), system behavior (monitoring tools) and incident (test management tool).

Having lots of data doesn't mean that information is communicated. Information presented visually is much easier for the human mind to take in and interpret. For example, a chart or graph is a better way to show information than a long list of numbers. This is why charts and graphs in spread-sheets are so useful. 

Special purpose tools give these features directly for the information they process.

Examples include statistics and graphs about test progress (test execution or test management tool), incident rates (incident management or test management tool) and performance (performance testing tool).

• In addition to these general benefits, each type of tool has specific benefits relating to the aspect of testing that the particular tool supports.
•  These benefits are normally prominently featured in the sales information available for the type of tool. 
• It is worth investigating a number of different tools to get a general view of the benefits.