History of software testing

“Software testing is the process of running a program with the intention of finding errors”— Glenford J. Myers.

The testing phase of a product is today one of the most important tasks of any business, not only in the world of software. The food we eat, the cars we drive, the toys we buy and even the toothpaste we use must go through multiple and meticulous tests that guarantee quality before being placed in the hands of the customer.

The objective of this phase is to guarantee a minimum of quality to avoid that the client finds failures in the product that can cause a loss of confidence in the company, a bad public image and in some cases, penalties worth millions of dollars, as happened with Samsung with the model Galaxy Note 7 and its defective and explosive batteries.

But, as could not be otherwise, the origin of this need for quality is merely economic. The main reason why this market starts to grow so much is due to the high costs involved in correcting these failures in advanced stages, however, detecting them in early stages is very profitable..

Although terms such as “testing” or “quality testing” may seem modern, software testing has been carried out and evolved since the beginning of computing, differentiating 5 important periods according to the most influential test models: