Software Development Vs. Software Testing

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Software testing: 

Software testing is process used to identify the correctness completeness and quality of the developed computer software. It includes a set of activities conducted with the intent of finding errors in software so that it could be corrected before product released to the end users. In simple words software testing is an activity to check whether actual results match the expected results and to ensure that software system is defect free. Software testing is more than just error detection, Testing software is operating the software under controlled conditions, to verify that it behaves as specified, detect errors, and validate that what has been specified is what the user actually wanted. Actually testing is the process of analyzing a software item to detect the differences between existing and required conditions (that is defects/errors/bugs) and to evaluate the features of the software item.

Software development: 

Software development used to refer to the activity of computer programming, which is the process of writing and maintaining the source code, but in a broader sense of the term it includes all that is involved between the conception of the desired software through to the final manifestation of the software, ideally in a planned and structured process.  Therefore, software development may include research, new development, prototyping, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products Software Developer has to deal with all actions from the initial design up to the final testing of software.

Difference: 

The process or phase of creating software is called software development, once the software has been created and ready to provide for end users, we test the software with the requirements.  Software testing is an execution of a program with the intention of finding bug.

Development is writing the code, testing is finding out whether or not the code runs the way you expect it to. Software testing is a scrutiny performed to provide information about the quality of a product or software under test to the concerned clients. The trained professionals who perform these testing jobs are called software testers. Software testing includes many different techniques and is not only limited to execution of programs to find errors or software bugs. Software development (also known as application development, software design, designing software, software application development, enterprise application development, or platform development) is the development of a software product.

Software tester works with the new software and help in repairing the errors occurred in it whereas Software developers are the professionals who develop the new software products depending on the client requirements. Software developers’ responsibilities also include broader aspects in development of software products. Software development comes with developer, software publisher, programmer and system development life cycle. Software testing is done by software testers, manager, test lead, test designer, tester, automation developer, and test administrator.

Difference Based on careers.......

Understanding The Indian IT Industry :

The Indian IT industry is mostly services based industry which relies mostly on two types of jobs : software development and software testing (QA). There are other streams too, but those are out of the scope of this discussion. We'll only focus on testing vs.software  development. 

Typically most big IT industries will take up projects from overseas clients and have engineers work on them. This leads to two career paths - Software Testing & Software Development. Overall - the software development teams are responsible for 'coding' and software testing teams are responsible for making sure that everything adheres to the specifications of the software being developed.

Roles Played By Software Developers Vs. Software Testers :

Typically there would be 'two' teams working in sync on a project because both software development and testing cannot be separated. Every written code must be checked for quality and without any team not existing - it'd be impossible to create the final software. The point I'm driving home is that both software development and testing teams are equally important. It's a myth that software 'testing' is kind of a 'lower' job as compared to software development.

When any project begins - both software development and testing teams get involved from day 1. While the actual job of software developers begins much later, software testing teams usually begins right at the time of verifying the specification documents and continues throughout the life cycle of the project. It'd not be wrong to say that software testing teams often have a better knowledge of the overall functioning of the software systems they are working on.

Software development, is one of the most crucial parts because without it, nothing gets 'developed'. Project manager or team lead will assign specific modules to you which you will have to code according to the specifications finalised by the software testing & business development teams. Every module developed by the developers is checked by the testing team and approved.

Skill Set Requirements: 

For Developers: The developer skill set will be determined by the nature of the project and the technology stack decided by the software architects (much senior position in the organisation). If the architects decide that a combo of Java, C, Ruby, Python would be used in the project then accordingly developers will be selected who are trained on these technologies.

For Test Engineers: They require entirely different skill set which could be a mix of Java, C, Ruby, Python along with software manual and automation tools along with scripting languages. There are several automation tools that require programming knowledge. It's a myth that software testing engineers do not write code. Given the complexity of the project a software testing engineer might end up writing more complex code than his developer counterpart. The point to be understood is that - both development and testing jobs require you to have programming knowledge.

Career Growth: 

Software testing and software development engineers have unique growth paths with similarities. Software developers may get promoted to module lead, team lead, project lead, project manager and so on depending on the company's hierarchy.

A software testing engineer will have a similar path where he/she will become team lead, project lead, project manager, test architect etc. It's a myth that there are no or little growth opportunities in software testing career.

Salaries Offered To Testing Engineers Vs. Developers:

It's a fact that few companies offer a bit lesser salary to testing engineers as compared to developers at the initial phase of career. But I've not seen this remaining a problem for longer time in career. In fact, a qualified automation engineer can draw much more salary than a developer with similar work experience (years).

Ultimately You Will Become Managers

I'd say 'unfortunately' because every promotion will take you away from your technical expertise. Ultimately you will become managers and will mostly use Microsoft Outlook, Power Point and Excel Sheets no matter which stream (development or testing) you belonged to. At that stage, your salaries will be the same as what the industry offers and your testing stream won't really matter.

There are few companies that allow you to stick to your roots through caries technical and management career paths. That however is out of scope of this post. You may ask specific questions about this, if you have any.

Should You Choose Software Development Or Software Testing?

If you are 'passionate' about coding [check if you've contributed to open source projects, developed a software in your part time just because it's fun, have you cracked complex coding problems just for fun?] then opt for software development.

If you aren't passionate about coding and haven't written a single line of code out of interest - any stream is okay for you. You'll be happy in any career stream - be it software development or testing.

Bottom Line: Don't form opinions or take decisions based on what people say. Most people are not at all exposed to the IT industry or just one of testing or software development. Do your own research, gather information on your own from well informed people (CE is an excellent place to do that). If you have questions, post them below. We've several software testing engineers and software developers who will be happy to answer your questions. If you have general comments, they are welcome too.