Quick questions on testing

What is testing? – Testing is a procedure that is carried out on systems to ensure that they will work properly in real life situations

Why is it important? – It is important as if a system isn’t tested then the problems that have not been discovered will develop when in use. This can cause a bad reputation for a company and cost them time and money to sort out the problems.

2 possible consequences to a company are – 1) if they do not test then they face complaints and returns from their customers losing them money. 2) The company failing to test would get a bad reputation for bad products.

Why is it important to have a test plan? - When you have a test plan it can save time as there is a structure to follow. There is a list of things you have to work through and when they are order the task is alot easier to do

Inland revenue testing problems

What was the Problem?
The problem was that the taxpayers weren’t submitting their returns on the online service and there fore getting fined for not getting them in on time.This is due to the online service failing, due to congestion on the server, and their system could not handle the pressure of everyone getting their returns in last minute.The HMRC covered up by saying it was a technical difficultly; they were offline for several hours, causing more frustration for taxpayers to get their returns in on time before the deadline.

The consequences where that the taxpayers were being fined for not submitting their returns in and it wasn’t their fault, fines where placed at £100 with interest.

Testing could have prevented this, by testing this website the HMRC could stop the system failing under pressure, and they could have tested it days in advance, they should have expected this as they know many would leave it to the last minute to file their returns in. develop and test their system to cope with the amount of people using the online service at one time.