Software testing plays a significant role in the process of software development. It helps in improving the quality of software, verification, and validation and estimating the software reliability. Softwares are in use by all industries, and any bug in a critical application can be severe and cause massive losses. A halt in trade of stock markets, airplane crash, etc. Therefore testing helps in determining the design defects made by a developer.
Guru99 (2017) lists down a few disasters caused by defects in the software:
- In April 2015, Bloomberg terminal in London crashed due to software glitch affected more than 300,000 traders on financial markets. It forced the government to postpone a 3bn pound debt sale.
- Nissan cars have to recall over 1 million cars from the market due to software failure in the airbag sensory detectors. There has been reported two accident due to this software failure.
- Starbucks was forced to close about 60 percent of stores in the U.S and Canada due to software failure in its POS system. At one point store served coffee for free as they unable to process the transaction.
- Some of the Amazon’s third-party retailers saw their product price is reduced to 1p due to a software glitch. They were left with heavy losses.
- Vulnerability in Window 10. This bug enables users to escape from security sandboxes through a flaw in the win32k system.
- In 2015 fighter plane F-35 fell victim to a software bug, making it unable to detect targets correctly.
- China Airlines Airbus A300 crashed due to a software bug on April 26, 1994, killing 264 innocent live
- In 1985, Canada’s Therac-25 radiation therapy machine malfunctioned due to a software bug and delivered lethal radiation doses to patients, leaving 3 people dead and critically injuring 3 others.
- In April of 1999, a software bug caused the failure of a $1.2 billion military satellite launch, the costliest accident in history
- In may of 1996, a software bug caused the bank accounts of 823 customers of a major U.S. bank to be credited with 920 million US dollars.
Thus software testing helps to find errors, defects or missing requirements. It can be either done manually or using automated tools.
References:
Guru99 (2017) What is Software Testing? Introduction, Basics & Importance. Available at: https://www.guru99.com/software-testing-introduction-importance.html (Accessed: 6 September 2017)
