functional testing

[functional-testing-blog]

Key approaches to meet UX Design

A lot of thought goes into designing a product. After the designing phase the product goes into the development phase, where individual components or units are developed and tested for desired outcomes. However, more often than not the product is only checked from the perspective of developers and not the end users. In such cases, even though the products or applications come out looking fabulous, they might possess inherent flaws such as a poor user interface, lack of accessibility, delay in loading, slow scrolling, an unimaginative layout, and erroneous content etc. These flaws when faced by the customers end up as poor user experience, the reason being inadequate Usability Testing. Besides, since there are many competitors of the product(s) in the market, end users will not think twice before latching onto some other. This not only reduces the viability of the product, but also dents the brand image of the company producing it. Usability testing plays a crucial role in estimating consumer expectations.

To avoid getting into such a situation in the first place, companies need to perform   usability testing in UX design for the product or application. Usability testing involves testing of the product by its end users or customers. While testing, the behaviour of users using the product is keenly observed by testers and key areas where some difficulties are faced get noted down. The areas of concern are addressed later before releasing the product into the market thus increasing its market viability.

UX design or simply user experience design (also UX, UXD, XD, or UED) enables applications or products to work better for the end user. It includes designing a better user interface, incorporating cool ergonomics and delivering faster responsiveness such that the end user does not find any difficulty, while navigating or operating the product.

 Best practices for usability testing

What is to be tested: The first step is to identify the application or a particular feature of the same that is to be tested. In a majority of cases, the whole application is tested for usability, accessibility and responsiveness.

Who should be tested: The second step is to identify specific users who are going to use the product for all practical purposes. The users should be chosen carefully as a wrong choice of users would be costly and time consuming – for the testers as well as users. For example, a medical app meant for doctors should not have laymen as users, but only medical professionals.

How many should be tested: A small group of end users should be asked to run the application, as it will be easier to observe them navigate and operate. They should be asked to ‘think out loud’ while navigating, so that the testers observing them can make informed choices about glitches. A large group will be unwieldy.

Who should watch usability testing: It is important to involve all stakeholders during testing, as the difficulties faced by users will be visible to all. Unless the difficulties are observed in person, there are chances of them being lost in transmission or translation between various stakeholders.

[functional-testing-blog]

5 Smart approaches to functional testing in a cloud environment.

Performing Functional Testing in Cloud environment is not too different from that in regular test environments. However, for cloud environments, the test cases need to be rewritten in order to keep them Cloud ready. Unless new features have been added as a part of the cloud hosting strategy, there is no difference in business process validation.

Functional Testing is generally performed to ensure that the services provided by the software are consistent with its specifications. Functional Testing can be performed through two perspectives –

-      Requirement based testing: In this approach the requirements are first prioritized and then the tests are prioritized accordingly. This is done to ensure that the most critical tests are covered in the process.

-      Business process based testing: In this approach, the testing scenarios involved in the day to day business of the system are described.

Functional Testing in a Cloud environment involves testing of all the features and functions of the system, which includes both the hardware and the software of the system. It is generally conducted on a completely integrated software platform in order to check its compliance with the requirements. In the cloud environment, the process of verification is carried out against a system of specifications and requirements on a Cloud instead of an on-premise software testing platform. Functional Testing may take various forms in a Cloud environment.

-      System Testing: This testing is performed in order to test the behavior of the system within its own boundaries. It is critical to prove that the system functions as it has been designed, inputs and outputs are as expected and the overall quality is ensured.

-      Integration Testing: Integration testing verifies that the Cloud environment will not be detrimental to the existing system and will successfully work with the current infrastructure and the environment.

-      User Acceptance Testing: This testing is performed in order to ensure that the Cloud environment supports the business requirements and the user accepts the Cloud solution.

-      Interoperability Testing: Most of the applications are now cross-platforms and must meet business critical requirements such as data exchanges, etc. Through interoperability testing, testers try to verify that the programs work with equal efficiency on a variety of platforms.

-      System Verification Testing: It is more of a technical testing, which includes code audits, documentation revisions and the testing of hardware as well as software components under normal and stressful conditions.  

The difference between an end-to-end testing and system integration testing is very clear in a Cloud environment. A complete end-to-end testing mainly focuses on testing combinations of business processes and systems by recreating real business scenarios. The following potential scenarios need to be validated through the testing processes.

-      Data Inconsistency

-      Data misinterpretation due to human dependencies

-      Consistency of database schema

Conclusion

Testing and Cloud are both large domains in their own respect. Functional Testing with respect to the cloud environment involves both traditional and new methods. For software applications provided on clouds, it is important to perform functional as well as non-functional testing. Software applications hosted on the Cloud pose additional testing challenges, which can get  resolved with  a systematic and comprehensive approach towards test planning.

[functional-testing-blog]

Functional testing is also referred to as Quality Assurance (QA) of the application or software. It is a process of testing the system to ensure that it performs as per the functionality specified in the System Requirement Specification.

- It verifies that the system functions as per the client requirements which were specified in the System Requirement Specification document. - It tests the usability of the system and ensures that all the navigational functions are working correctly. - It checks for exception handling and proper error message display.

Process of Testing

This testing generally involves the following steps:

• Identifying the software requirements • Preparing a combination of test data for testing • Calculating the output to be generated with each input set • Running the test case and compare the results generated with the expected results

Types  

The different types of functional Testing are as follows:

• Unit Test: It is the process of testing each unit of code to ensure that each implementation is functionally correct. When software requirements change or get modified, these tests also get modified.

• Smoke Test: It is a series of tests that are conducted before the start of detailed testing. Smoke testing verifies the high level functional inconsistencies of the application.

• Integration Test: This ensures that the software application is compatible with other applications. Here, testing goals require running those tests which will need communication to be established. In case the system under consideration is a stand-alone system, then Integration test may be overlooked.

• White Box Test: This testing is based on the inter structure of the system. It can also be referred to as Code Based Testing as it - Verifies the security holes in the code -  Verifies the incomplete paths in the code -  Verifies the flow of data as in requirement specification document. White box testing verifies 100% of the code in the software application.

• Black Box Test:  Here the functionality of the system is tested with a combination of appropriate and inappropriate data and the output is compared with the required results. This test only focuses on the input given and the output generated without knowing the internal code implementation.  If any error or discrepancy as compared to the desired result is generated, then it is fixed and the system is tested again.

• Regression Test: This testing ensures that code or functionality modification in one part of the system has not affected other functionality of the system. Regression testing is repetitive and ensures that the software quality is maintained.

• Acceptance Test: This kind of testing evaluates the usability of the system from the end user’s perspective. These test cases are developed from user requirements and require to be defined in the System Development Life Cycle. This helps the developers to understand what kind of system they are developing.

• Localization Testing: In localized testing, the application is tested for its performance and efficiency in the local market or a comparatively smaller geographical area than that considered for globalized application.

• Globalization Testing: Globalized testing, also known as internationalized testing ensures that an application is functional in diverse locations or in a larger geographical area. . This test validates whether the application can be used all over the world and checks if all kinds of language characters are supported.

Test Tools

There are several tools available to perform functional testing.  JUnit is available for Java applications. SoapUI & Watir is used to test web services.