Testing VS Checking

Let’s see what role each one of them plays in Rapid Software Testing.

First of all, let’s define what testing and checking mean.

• Checking is getting information processes that can be done by machines or by human.
• Testing is a process of questioning, that is based on human skills, emotions, thinking, intelligence that could not be done by machine.

Checking is one small part of the entire testing process.  Testing lifecycle includes many processes and checking is one of them, but when we are doing checking, we cannot say, that we are doing testing.

Checking also can be described as process of confirming and verifying our expectations.

We often read about “automated testing” and “manual testing”, but what we need to understand is that we can not automate thinking, emotions or our senses. We automate checks, so if you want to add an automated word, you can say automated checking or manual checking.

If you’re going to check one thing for more than once, it is better to automate checking to save your time. Machines cannot think and cannot do testing for you, but you can tell machines to check and report the results of checking. Automation checking saves time, so as a tester you only need to concentrate on designing and coding your automation check. If performing automation check takes you the exact same time or even a bit longer than performing manual testing, then you should know that you have done it wrong.

Many people often ask what skills they need to become a good software tester. My answer is:  When someone has detecting, describing, analyzing and risk recognizing skills, and when one can convert those risks into test ideas; performing checks and later converting those results into reports, we can say, that one has got testing skills.

Besides these skills, it is highly recommended that software testers have also some programming and project management skills. Programming skills help testers to be able to read and understand the results of machine run checks after converting test ideas into tasks for machines. Project management skills help testers to be able to define tasks and estimate the severity of bugs for example.