After spending countless hours building an application, developers must answer the crucial question, “does this software actually work as it should?” With over 5.5 million mobile apps available for download between Google Play and the Apple App Store, it is essential for companies to thoroughly check the functioning of each new application to stand out from the crowd. This is where functional testing comes in.
Simply put, functional testing is used to check if a new system, application, or website is functioning exactly as it should. It is concerned with the user experience and focuses on what the results are rather than how they occur. This type of testing usually involves the creation of a functional testing checklist that comprises the activities, resources, prerequisites, etc., in a sequential order which are needed to fulfill the functional requirements.
This guide will help you understand what functional testing is, the different types and benefits of the process, and how you can incorporate it into your quality assessment strategy.
What Are The Types Of Functional Testing?
There are many functional testing types that you can choose from depending on your requirements. Some of the more common types are:
- Unit Testing
Unit testing involves checking individual components or parts of the software. It is done to ensure that each module is working as expected by calling the methods in each unit and validating them if they return values that match the requirements.
- Smoke Testing
Smoke testing is carried out to make sure all the core functionalities of the software are functioning accurately and not facing any anomalies.
- Sanity Testing
Sanity testing is carried out after smoke testing. This testing aims to check if all major functionalities are working in isolation and in combination with each other.
- Regression Testing
Regression testing is carried out to ensure that any changes or additions to the codebase do not disrupt the existing functionality. It need not be as extensive as other types of functionality testing; the goal is to check stability after making changes such as bug fixing.
- Integration Testing
Integration testing is performed by developers and testers to expose the issues that occur when integrated units interact with each other.
- Recovery Testing
Recovery testing evaluates the software’s ability to recover from potential issues such as crashes, overloading, hardware problems, etc.
- Database Testing
This type of testing involves checking the database’s schemas, triggers, and tables to evaluate data integrity and consistency. During database testing, the tester can create complex queries to stress the database and check its subsequent response.
- Beta or Usability Testing
Beta testing involves the software being tested by customers in a production environment. It is a crucial part of QA testing as it helps gauge the actual customer’s opinion of the product and its interface. Feedback from this round is used to improve the software before the official launch.
The Functional Testing Process
The steps involved in functional testing usually include:
- Determine which functionality of the product needs to be tested. This can vary from testing main functions, messages, error conditions, and/or product usability.
- First, you need to determine which functionalities you need to test. These can include messaging, error conditions, usability, or central functions.
- Create input data according to which the functionalities will be tested to meet the specific requirements.
- Determine the required results or outputs which would be acceptable.
- Execute the test cases.
- Check if the actual output matches the predetermined required output to gauge if the system is working correctly.
What Are The Functional Testing Best Practices?
Create Test Cases Early
Instead of waiting for the coding to be completed, you should start creating test cases in the early phases of the project.
Automate
By automating the functional testing process, you can make it less time-consuming, achieve the desired functionality quicker, and save on costs. While you should not automate all test cases, getting the more crucial test cases off the manual roster is helpful.
Understand the End-User’s Thought Process
Functional testers should always prioritize the preferences of the end-user. Different applications have different customers, e.g., buyers, supervisors, or data entry clerks, and their needs must be kept in mind while creating the testing plan.
Prioritize
It is impossible to test every feature on an app since testing is a time and resource-consuming process. Therefore it is necessary to identify the more essential functions of the applications and prioritize testing those.
What Are The Advantages Of Functional Testing?
The main advantage of crowdtesting is that it ensures all the functionalities of a software or program are working as expected. Some other functional testing benefits include:
- Ensuring all the client’s requirements are met.
- Helping deliver a bug-free product.
- Improving the safety and security of the application.
- Gauging the end-user’s opinions and adapting the product accordingly.
- Reducing the risk associated with launching a new app or program.
However, there are some disadvantages to functional testing as well: it may miss certain logical errors in the system, doesn’t guarantee if the software will go live, and has a high possibility of redundant testing. Though it remains an integral part of the QA process, it is essential that qualified experts carry out functional testing to get the best results.
Discover Crowdtesting With Oprimes
Comprehensive functional testing is crucial before launching a new product as it ensures the software works at an optimal level and provides the best user experience. However, given the many functional testing types and processes, the process can become overwhelming for your in-house QA team. Oprimes can help you meet your API functional testing requirements in a time and cost-effective manner.
Oprimes, India’s largest crowdtesting SaaS platform, provides 360⁰ functional and non-functional testing on a completely pay-per-use basis. Our curated tester community is equipped with access to various devices and platforms and ready-to-use test cases, giving results within hours.
Over the last five years, we’ve helped startups and large enterprises such as PhonePe and HDFC Bank deliver bestselling apps. So sign up with Oprimes today and let us help you launch a bug-free product.
