What is the Software testing objective? Also define a successful test.

What is the Software testing objective? Also define a successful test.

Software testing objective

• The correct approach to testing a scientific theory is not to try to verify it, but to seek to refute the theory. That is to prove that it has errors. (Popper 1965)
• The goal of testing is to expose latent defects in a software system before it is put to use.
• A software tester tries to break the system. The objective is to show the presence of a defect not the absence of it.
• Testing cannot show the absence of a defect. It only increases your confidence in the software.
• This is because exhaustive testing of software is not possible – it is simply too expansive and needs virtually infinite resources.

Successful Test
From the following sayings, a successful test can be defined “If you think your task is to find problems then you will look harder for them than if you think your task is to verify that the program has none” – Myers 1979.

“A test is said to be successful if it discovers an error” – doctor’s analogy. 

The success of a test depends upon the ability to discover a bug not in the ability to prove that the software does not have one. As, it is impossible to check all the different scenarios of a software application, however, we can apply techniques that can discover potential bugs from the application. Thus a test that helps in discovering a bug is a successful test. In software testing phase, our emphasis is on discovering all the major bugs that can be identified by running certain test scenarios. However it is important to keep in mind that testing activity has certain limitations.