Extensive testing is required to ensure the qualitative and functional aspects of the software. Comprehensive software testing helps supply a perfect application to customers, within a short turnaround time.
These days, companies are investing heavily in software testing with organizations worldwide spending around 40% of the development expenses on testing. Are you a software testing company? Even if you are a development company, planning to outsource the testing assignments, you must be aware of the most common testing methodologies.
Listed below are the testing techniques that ensure a quality software application.
Unit Testing
Unit testing involves the analysis of individual modules or a single component. In this form of testing, the testing activities are performed by programmers, rather than the Quality Assurance (QA) engineers.
It is for the reason that unit testing requires comprehensive knowledge about software design and coding. It is the most common testing methodology employed by the top software testing companies worldwide.
Manual Unit Testing
As you can make it from the name itself, this methodology deals with manual testing approaches. The process is similar to unit testing. However, in this case, the testing assignments do not involve any automated programs or tools.
Automated Unit Testing
The methodology involves the deployment of specialized applications to conduct the testing task. The process is all about testing the components individually. It is one of the most effective techniques to accelerate the testing process.
Integrated Testing
This methodology is the second-level testing that follows the unit testing activities. The objective is to check if all the components in the software are working in tandem. The integrated testing process includes the scopes for testing unit components, module testing, application testing, and testing the serve and client Application on a framework.
System Testing
It is a form of integrated testing process. Its objective is to evaluate the correlation between the final software and the System involved. System testing is the third phase of the overall methodology. It aims to evaluate if the software’s performance is as desired. Black box and white box testing are the two forms of system testing.
Black Box Testing
A testing professional will apply this testing process if he/she needs to test software without prior knowledge about the design, structure, and the application of the software undergoing the test. The objective is to ensure that the tester is conducting the testing without any pre-conceived notions. It is one of the advanced levels of software testing.
White Box Testing
The process involves testing with prior knowledge about the structure, design, and applications of software. Its objective is to check the functions, codes, and the paths within the software on the final stage. White-Box Testing comes within low-end testing.
Acceptance Testing
It is all about a user-acceptance testing methodology. It deals with the testing of the usability and the functionality of a software. The client will typically conduct this testing.
The purpose is to verify if the entire process is moving in the right direction to ensure that the software matches the client’s expectations. UAT is the final level of testing before the software moves to the production phase.
Alpha Testing
This testing methodology aims to identify and eliminate the possible issues before releasing the software to the market or delivering it to the client. Usually, Alpha testing involves a laboratory ecosystem. The process finds its foundation on the Black Box and White Box Testing methods.
Beta Testing
This testing process is applied when the clients decide to interact with the initial interact of any software. The testing process always involves a real-time testing ambiance. The process aims to explore hidden bugs, if any, in case the developers have missed them. Clients will come up with their feedback. Subsequently, the feedback will get analyzed to identify and eliminate significant development failures so that the software is perfect for releasing to the market or for delivery to the clients.
Smoke Testing
The objective of this process is to explore any barriers, emerging out of inappropriate coding. The test target on identifying and eliminating troubles to ensure smooth functioning of the software.
End-to-End Testing
The smoke testing methodology involves testing all the components involved in software, and it usually follows the system testing process. The test objective is to evaluate if the software will meet user expectations.
Ad-Hoc Testing
The Ad-Hoc Testing is an informal method of testing conducted casually, and it will never involve any documentation of the testing outcomes. This testing methodology aims to detect the defects that were missed out during the regular testing phase.
Though it is a complex testing process, it’s effective in identifying and eliminating the bugs, almost impossible to find through other testing methods.
Graphical User Interface Testing
The test evaluates the Graphical User Interface (GUI) based on the specifications and feedbacks from the customers. Following are the focus areas in the GUI Testing process:
- Size, width, position, length, and the color of the various components.
- How the software displays the error messages
- Images and text alignments
- Visual aesthetics
- Image clarity
Compatibility Testing
The objective of this testing is to find how an application is likely to function across various ecosystems. It involves the scopes for networks, hardware and web servers. Compatibility testing is one of the most common practices among Testing Professionals.
Backward Compatibility Testing
It is all about evaluating if the updated version of the software will function properly in the older operating ecosystem.
This testing methodology deals with web application testing to identify errors that can affect a software’s compatibility with different operating systems and browsers.
Backend Testing
It is all about testing the database, wherein a software will store the data extruded from the front-end. As this testing methodology has no GUI involvement, testers will connect to the database directly for verifying data.
