STONECPS

Software development entails a lot of steps and processes and part of the steps that the company must take to develop highly reliable software is quality testing. Quality testing is a very important step in the software development because it helps organization detect bugs at the early stage of software development which can help them save on development expenses.

Programmers who wrote the program have the complete knowledge and background of the logic and the flow of the program so they are a good resource to use when conducting quality testing. They know what would be the required input and the required output for the software being developed so they can be the reliable person to conduct the unit, integration and system testing.

But programmers are still human and as much as they want to reduce errors in programs, they do unknowingly insert codes in the programs that they are writing that may cause errors in the software. Also, sometimes, they can be bias in testing the quality of the program that they have written. That is why if an organization can afford it, it would still be best to get an independent and separate team for quality testing. An independent team with a new perspective and is not bias, who can take a look at the program.

In my opinion, as long as the organization follows the standard software development methodology in developing a software, then quality testing done by programmers themselves is enough but this process is a strenuous job and requires more on numerous system tests as viewed in a different perspective. If the organization can afford to hire an external or separate team, then it is a plus for the organization since this will ensure that their software is being check by a different entity that can scrutinize the possible loopholes and advantages that can be exploited as compared to the knowledge of the developers.