Software Testing Types and Their Techniques

Software testing is defined as an investigation performed to provide complete information about the software product or any service under test. It provides information about the quality of the software product or service to the customers/stakeholders. It is the process of verifying the software product/program to check whether it meets the desired results. It also helps to ensure the software system is error-free (defect-free). This testing helps to analyze and check whether the actual results are matched with the desired results of the software product. It helps to identify the bugs/errors, gaps, and other missing components during the execution of each software product. It evaluates the features of software products by using either manual testing or automation testing process. It is also referred to as white box or black box testing or verification of application under test(AUT).

Software Testing Types

There are different software testing types and techniques. Some of them are discussed below.

• Installation testing
• Comparability testing
• Smoke testing
• Sanity testing
• Regression testing
• Acceptance testing
• Functional testing,
• Non-functional testing (performance testing)
• Continuous testing
• Software Performance Testing
• Security testing
• Concurrent testing
• A/B testing (acceptance/beta testing)
• Maintenance ( regression and maintenance testing.
• Functional testing types are,
• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• System testing
• Interface testing
• Non-functional testing types are,
• Performance testing
• Stress testing
• Load testing
• Volume testing
• Reliability testing
• Recovery testing
• Compliance testing
• Usability testing
• Localization testing.

Installation Testing

It is one of the vital types of software testing to ensure the accuracy and correctness of the software product. Installation testing is performed to check whether the software product is correctly installed with all the features and working as per the desired results. It is also called as Implementation testing. To ensure the user’s optimum user experience, the software testers validate the quality and accuracy of the installation process.

It has many features such as

• Installation testing is activity-based testing executed during operational acceptance testing and in the last stage of the software testing life cycle (STLC).
• During the software installation process, it identifies and detects the bugs and issues.
• Installation testing is done by software testing engineers and configuration manager.

Comparability Software Testing

Comparability testing is one of the types of non-functional software testing, to check whether the software product or program or application is working as per the desired conditions. It helps the user to evaluate the software product comparability with different operating systems, networks, hardware, browser or mobile devices. It can be divided into two versions such as,

• Forward comparability testing: It is used to test and verify the behavior of the software product or application in the new version.
• Backward comparability testing: It is also known as downward comparability to check the software product or application in older versions.
• Comparability testing is most popular in checking the comparability of different browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer and many more.
• It checks the comparability of Linux, Mac OS, and Windows operating systems.
• It checks the different network applications like 3G, 4G and wi-fi.
• It also checks the comparability of applications with mobile devices like android, ios, and windows, etc.

Smoke and Sanity Software Testing

Smoke testing also called build verification testing, which is similar to hardware testing. It is a type of testing and refers to the testing of the basic functionality of the build. It is performed to ensure that all functions of an application or a program are working well. It consists of a non-exhaustive set of tests to make the functions work. It is an initial testing process used to check whether all the hardware components are switched on and software product under test is stable. This type of testing is executed before the functional tests are executed on the software build.

It also checks the behavior of hackers attack, miscellaneous programs and software maintenance for data security after hacking. If this testing is failed, then the build is said to be unstable and it is not performed anymore until the smoke testing of the build is finished. It helps to design and execute the functionalities of a software product or an application.

Sanity testing is one of the basic software testing techniques performed after receiving the software build. It ensures that all the bugs with some changes in code and functionality have been fixed. It helps reduce further issues that occured due to the bugs. If sanity testing is failed, then the software build is rejected to save time and cost. It is a subset of regression testing, which is usually performed by the testers team. The main objective of sanity testing is to check the rationality of the system in order to do more rigorous testing further.

It is unscripted to identify the missing functionalities of an application. It focuses on one or a few areas of functionalities of code because it is a narrow regression.

Regression Testing

Regression testing is one of the types of testing performed to evaluate the changes in the software code or application that has not affected the existing functionality of the code. It helps to verify that changes in code don’t have an impact on its existing features of the code. The executed test cases are re-executed to check whether the application is working good and no bugs are introduced during the new changes. It also helps to fix the bugs and changes in the exsisting and new functionality of the code. It can be performed on a software build, even if there are a significant change and single bug in the functionality of code.

There are two types of regression tests.

• Final Regression Test: It is performed to check that the build hasn’t changed for a longer period of time. After checking, the build is shipped and available to the customers.
• Normal Regression Tests: It is performed to ensure that build doesn’t break and any part of the application due to recent changes, bug fixing, and enhancement.

Acceptance Testing

Acceptance testing is a type of software testing performed to verify whether the software application has met the specific requirements or not. The main role of this test is to check the acceptability and evaluates the system’s compliance compared with the business requirements. It also checks that software application or product is acceptable for delivery according to the end-user. The tasks performed during the acceptability testing are, Prepare, Review, Rework, Baseline and Perform.

There are various types of acceptance testing. They are

• User acceptance testing
• Business acceptance testing
• Beta testing and
• Alpha testing
• Acceptance testing can be performed due to the following reasons
• Functional correctness and completeness
• Data conversion
• Data integrity
• Performance
• Usability
• Timeliness
• Scalability
• Documentation
• Confidentiality, availability, installation, and upgrading.
• The acceptance test report provides a report identifier, summary, changes in the code, recommended changes, a summary of a to-do list and final approval decision.

Alpha Testing

Alpha testing is one of the types of software testing, performed to find the bugs in an application or a product before releasing it to the users or public or customers. It comes under customer validation methodology in acceptance testing. It can be performed without any development teams.

It checks the commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) by means of an internal acceptance testing before the beta testing. The main objective of the developer during alpha testing is to identify the bugs quickly. It can be given to the software QA team for further additional testing.

Beta Testing

Beta testing is one of the types of software testing, performed to assess the functionality, usability, reliability, and comparability of a software product or application. It comes under customer validation methodology, which is an acceptance testing. It helps to add value to the product as a real customer. This testing helps to increase the quality of the product, which can lead to success further. To improve the product, it helps in decision making, which can lead to investing further in the upcoming products. It is done at the user’s side, which cannot be controlled.

The success of beta testing depends on the following factors,

• Cost of the test
• Number of participants in the test
• Shipping
• Duration of test
• Demographic coverage

Functional Vs Non-functional Testing

Functional testing is a type of software testing technique, performed to verify each function of a software application or product runs according to the specific requirements. It helps to verify whether the actual results of an application are matched with the expected results. There is no need for source code. It is used to test the behavior of an application as per the specific software requirement of the user or client. This is also known as Black box testing. It can be performed manually to identify the bugs effectively.

It is performed before the non-functional testing according to the user’s requirements and expectations.

The examples of functional testing types are,

• Unit testing
• Smoke testing
• User acceptance
• Regression testing
• Integration testing
• Globalization
• Localization and
• Interoperability.

Non-functional Testing

Non-functional testing is a type of software testing, performed to verify the non-functional parameters of a software application like performance, stress, load, usability, reliability, comparability, scalability, security and many more. It assesses the performance of a software application and enhances the user experience. It is very difficult to perform manually in order to reach the user’s expectations. It helps to verify the performance of a product and monitor its working.

The examples of non-functional testing are,

• Performance testing
• Scalability testing
• Volume testing
• Usability testing
• Stress testing
• Load testing
• Portability testing
• Compliance testing and
• Disaster recovery testing.

Continues Software Testing

Continuous testing is a type of software testing, performed to execute the automated tests early to get feedback on the business risks along with the software application. It is a continuous delivery process, which helps to evaluate the quality of the product. The main goal is to test the product or application early.

To explain the accuracy of the system, manual testing and manual inspection of code change, documentation is necessary. It helps to develop and extend the test automation to increase complexity, development, delivery and modern application. This testing process should be done within the development process to assess the business risks regarding the software application or product. It removes the redundancy and enhances the business risk coverage by continuous review and optimization of test suit.

Software Performance Testing

Software performance testing is a type of non-functional software testing performed to check the performance of a software application or system in terms of speed, scalability, and responsiveness under various workload conditions. It measures the quality of a software application or system in terms of speed, scalability, reliability, usage of resources and stability. It helps to verify whether the software application is working as per the desired results under various workload conditions.

The main objective of performance testing is to detect the bugs and enhance the performance of the system or application.

The process of software performance testing involves in project assessment, planning of test, implementation of test performance, analyzing the results and tuning of the system and completes the test. During this process, the tests can be re-identified in planning and set the benchmark after tuning.

There are different types of performance testing,

• Load testing
• Endurance testing
• Stress testing
• Spike testing
• Volume testing and
• Scalability testing.

Security Testing

Security testing is a type of software testing technique, performed to uncover or show the vulnerabilities, threats, and risks of a software product or application. It also checks that data and resources are protected by an application are from intruders. The main purpose of security testing is to find the loopholes and weaknesses of an application, which results in loss of information, revenue and bad reputation of an organization.

It helps to identify and fix the bugs in an application and measures the potential vulnerabilities that don’t affect the functionality of an application or system.

As per the manual open source security testing methodology, there are 7 types of security testing. They are

• Vulnerability scanning
• Penetration scanning
• Security scanning
• Risk assessment
• Ethical hacking
• Posture assessment and
• Security auditing.

Concurrent Testing

Concurrent testing is a type of software testing technique, performed to identify and detect the defect in an application when multiple users are logged in. It is also known as multi-user testing, which is used to measure and identify the issues in an application such as response time, deadlocks, throughout output and other issues related to the concurrency.

It helps to increase the reliability and robustness of the concurrent testing process. When there is any change in a sequential execution of an application, concurrent testing ensures the reliability of an application using concurrent programs.

Due to non-determinism and synchronization, concurrent testing is more difficult than sequential testing. It helps to identify and assess the effects of database records, modules, code of an application, access to shared resources at the same time.

A/B Software Testing

A/B testing is also called as split testing or bucket testing, performed to compare one or more versions of a webpage or an application and determines the better performance of anyone version.

If two or more versions of a webpage are shown to the user randomly, then A/B testing uses sequential analysis to identify the better performance for a given conversion goal.

The process of A/B testing includes collecting the data, identifying the goals, generating a hypothesis, creating variations, run the experiment and analyze the results.

Thus, this is all about an overview of different types of software testing. Hence these are the software testing types and techniques explained above. Here is a question for you, what are the advantages and disadvantages of software testing types and techniques.