MANUAL TESTING – The Basics for All Testers

We will cover all distinctive parts of manual testing by this article of manual testing for freshers and experienced professionals.

So, what does the word 'Manual Testing' let you know? Any testing which required manual intervention. In spite of the fact that it could be manual functional testing or estimating the reaction and response time of a page physically or a security test which you perform physically. Same isn't the situation with our Testing industry.

When it comes to 'Manual Software Testing', it entirely signifies 'Manual Functional Testing'.

So now this is the thing we will discuss in this topic – 'Manual Functional Testing' or you can state Manual Testing as you can better identify with this term.

Before we explore software testing, let us first try to understand what software is? Simply put, Software is a set of programs, which tell the computer what to do. In order to differentiate the purpose, the software is classified into two types namely System software and Application Software.

The examples of System software are Operating Systems like Windows, Linux and Mac. While examples of Application Software are spreadsheets like MS Excel, Word Processing software like MS- Word, Word Pad, and database software like MS- Access, Oracle. Typically Application Software manipulates text, numbers, and graphics and so on.

The Phases of Software Development(SDLC)

Requirement	Analysis & Design	Implementation	Testing	Deployment	Maintenance
• Feasibility Study (“can we do it on time and effectively?”) • Requirements elicitation and analysis (“What does it need to do?”) • Requirements specification(“Write it all down”)	• High Level Design(“Components, Interfaces, Packages) • Low Level Design(“Class, Operations, relationship”)	• Builds (“Nightly, Weekly”) • Debugging • Integration of Components	• Unit Testing(Testing Components) • Integration Testing(Testing Sub Systems and Interfaces) • System Testing(Test System as a Whole) • Acceptance Testing(Validate user needs are met)	• Installation Script • Release Notes • Product Manual Training	• Preventive (Improve future maintainability) • Corrective (Correct errors, defects) • Adaptive (Adaptability to changing environment) • Perfective (New capabilities and enhancements)

The Software development life-cycle consists of six main phases. The development can be done using either of the following models:

·         Waterfall Model

·         Iterative Model

·         Spiral Model

·         V Model

·         Agile Model

For more information on above models I will write a separate article soon.