"Why do we test software?" seems like a silly question—most people would say, “So we know it works, duh." But there are many other reasons we test our products, as well as many possible benefits besides confirming that a system does what we intended it to do. Figuring out the purpose behind your tests is illuminating.

Web services—the applications that talk to other applications—are generally finished before the GUI, so you can test the business logic before you think about the actual interface. You can improve the quality of your application, find interesting bugs that don’t exist in the GUI, and give web services some love.

Mobile testers need to know which devices and operating systems are in demand, but you don’t want to have to maintain (and test) every device on the market. Here’s how you can set up the most relevant farm of mobile devices so that you can feel secure that your application will work correctly for most of your users.