functional testing
5 Major Differences between Functional and Non-Functional Testing Explained
While testing a software application, testers have to focus on both functional and non-functional requirements. They need to perform various types of functional tests to ensure that the software meets all business requirements. Likewise, they also need to assess the application’s user experience by performing a variety of tests against the non-functional requirements. That is why, it is important for the testers to understand some of the major differences between these two types of software testing.
5 Important Differences between Functional and Non-Functional Testing
1) Objective
As a type of black-box testing, functional testing is performed to check it the application meets all predefined business requirements and specification. The outcome of functional testing helps managers to decide if the software is ready for release. On the other hand, non-functional testing is performed to assess the application’s user experience. The testers perform a variety of tests against non-functional requirements to determine the amount of time required by the application to perform specific actions or respond to user request.
2) Types of Tests
A business has to perform both functional and non-functional testing to make the software popular and profitable in the longer run. So the testers need to perform usability, regression testing, smoke testing, and sanity testing to decide if the application is ready for release. At the same time, they also need to assess the application’s behaviour and user experience by performing a variety of non-functional tests like stress, load/performance, compatibility, reliability, compliance, and security testing. However, the types of functional and non-functional tests to be performed will differ from one project to another based on the nature and usage of the software.
3) Identifying Defects in the Software
Often the features and functionality of a software application is impacted by bugs, defects or flaws in it. These defects further prevent the software from meeting business requirements exactly and effectively. So the testers have to perform functional tests to identify the bugs or defects in the software, and get these eliminated without any delay. But the testers are not required to focus on finding bugs or defects in the software while performing non-functional testing. They have to perform tests against the application’s non-functional requirements to assess its behaviour and user experience.
4) Both Negative and Positive Testing
Normally, non-functional testing is performed based on a number of criteria that are not considered while performing functional testing. The tests performed against these criterions help testers to assess the quality of the software from the perspective of multiple users. But the testers have to perform both positive and negative functional testing. While performing positive functional testing, they have to submit valid inputs, and check how the application responds to these valid inputs accurately, and generate the desire outputs. Likewise, they also need to perform negative functional testing using invalid inputs, invalid operations, and unexpected operating conditions.
5) Test Automation Tools
An enterprise can automate both functional and non-functional testing efforts. In addition to reducing the testing time, the tools further help testers to perform the tests repeatedly. But often businesses find it easier to automate the non-functional testing. The testers can use a variety of tool to perform load, performance, stress and compatibility testing quickly and repeatedly. However, the testers have to write additional test scripts to perform both positive and negative functional testing through the tools. It is always important for the business to pick the right test automation tools to automate each type of testing effectively.
On the whole, the software testing strategy of a business has to focus on both functional and non-functional requirements of the applications. At the same time, it is also important for the testers to understand the objectives of each type of testing clearly to assess the software application more effectively.
What is JIRA and how does it help testers?
In addition to implementing a comprehensive software testing strategy, the businesses also need to manage the regular testing activities efficiently. Many businesses nowadays use customized tools to effectuate test management in agile environment. Atlassian has designed JIRA with features to help businesses to effectuate project management in an agile environment. At the same time, the commercial tool also makes it easier for QA professionals to track a variety of bugs and issues. There are also a number of reasons why JIRA is hugely popular among both enterprises and QA professionals.
Features that Differentiate JIRA from Other Project Management Tools
Refer Anything as an Issue
As noted earlier, JIRA helps testers to track a variety of issues and bugs. It further allows users to treat anything as an issue. For instance, the users can refer a software bug, any specific project task, a leave request form, or a helpdesk ticket as an issue. So they can use the software to track and mange all aspects of the software testing project.
Categorize and Link Issues
JIRA further allows testers to categorize and link various issues in a flexible way. They can categorize individual issues by assigning them to a specific component or version. The labeling makes it easier for users to find issues based on their labels. Likewise, the users can establish connection between two distinct issues hosted on the same or different servers.
Clone Original Issues
JIRA allows testers to clone individual issues. So they can easily duplicate the original issue, and allow multiple users to access and manipulate a single issue simultaneously. The clone issue can also be connected with the original issue efficiently to accommodate the changes made by multiple users. The software further allows testers to differentiate the cloned issues by adding relevant information like description, summary, issue type, priority, environment, assignee and reporter.
Create Two Types of Boards
JIRA allows agile teams to create and manage issues efficiently using boards. The testers can refer to the custom boards to monitor issues from a single or multiple projects from a single place. They also have option to create two different types of boards, i.e., Scrum and Kanban. The scrum boards help users to focus on iterative and incremental chunks of work. On the other hand, kanban boards make it easier for testers to monitor the workflow and reduce work-in-progress to deliver maximum output on a continuous basis.
Use Filters, Add-ons and APIs
JIRA further effectuates agile testing project management by providing a variety of add-ons and APIs. The testers have option to customize and extend the software by downloading plug-and-play add-ons from the Atlassian Marketplace. Likewise, they can use a variety of APIs to integrate JIRA with other tools used by the agile team. At the same time, the programmers can simplify the software by writing custom filters in JIRA Query Language (JQL).
Make Data-Driven Decisions
The project managers need to monitor teams, resources and projects consistently to manage software testing process efficiently. They can use JIRA as a project management tool to create realistic roadmap for the project, while monitoring the teams, resources and project continuously. JIRA can even be used by managers to take various data-driven decisions quickly.
Generate Different Types of Reports
JIRA further helps testers to generate a wide variety of reports to facilitate decision making. The reports can also be used by various stakeholders in the project to take crucial decisions. Based on their requirements, the users have option to generate recently created issues, resolution time, resolved vs. created issues, time tracking, and user workload reports. They can even use pie charts present the information in a more appealing and readable format.
However, each enterprise has to incur additional expensed to avail these benefits of JIRA. Atlassian allows business to choose from several pricing options according to their team size and requirements. At the same time, the users also have option to host the software on their servers or in the cloud. So it becomes easier for businesses to use JIRA without spending a lot of money.
Best Practices to Follow while Performing Functional Testing
Software testing consists of a vast number of procedures which are performed on the developed software as a precautionary measure to make it as flawless as possible. During the procedure, the software is checked for functionality, design, user friendly behavior, amount of stress it can handle as well as the security issues that the software may face.
Of the various test methods that comprises the software testing procedure, functional testing is the most important of the lot as people will use the particular software, majorly for the purpose of its functionality. Following are a list of practices that you can follow to attain the best result out of functional testing.
- Analysis of the obtained results and getting to the root of the “Fail” results is the most important task of all.
- It is practically impossible to make the software completely flawless; however you should aim at maximum test coverage so as to make it as perfect as possible.
- While you are checking the functional aspects, it is best to break down the software in small modules in order to increase the test coverage.
- While you are checking the functionality, make sure you test the software for unfavourable conditions.
- Don’t start testing your software with a mindset of gaining a completely bug free piece of product.
- Functional testing of the software should begin as early as possible in the developmental stage in order to solve the problems before it gets further complicated.
- Once you spot an error in the developed software, make sure to report it back to the developers as soon as possible.
- Check the software functionality with the help of critical time testing to enhance the performance of the same. Also, avoid rushing the test team and provide them with sufficient time to check the software.
- Make the software do things it is not meant to do to check the functioning of the software in such unfavourable or flawed conditions.
- Always make sure to check the latest functional testing results with the previously obtained one in order to get hang of the most repetitive function issues as well as the progress on the functional front.
- Keep a record of all the findings of the software tests for future references.
- Once the reported bugs has been rectified, you now need to check the software again to make sure that the software isn’t malfunctioning due to the rectification and also to check the development of new bugs.
- Avoids the entry of the developers in the test region and take special attention to write down all the changes in the final report of the software functional tests.
- A good conversation with the development team is absolutely essential to make them understand about the detected problem and what you expect them to do about it. Having a well bonded relationship with the developers team helps in smooth conversation.
- Start testing the software for its functionality as early as possible to avoid the piling up of the bugs or performance issues and always maintain an extensive report which will contain all the details of the procedures and results of the performed tests.
We hope that these few points will help you to conduct functional testing that are going to yield an almost perfect software for your customers.
Different Kinds of Software Testing Services
Various software tests you can do for assessment of your software. Following is a list of the top tests you can perform.
- Black Box Testing specifically tests the functionality of the software and doesn’t pay heed to internal design.
- White Box Testing checks the various internal software and codlings that the software is built on. Code coverage is the main factor.
- Unit Testing deals with the checking of the modules that the software is broken into and requires detailed knowledge of coding, hence usually done by the programmers.
- Incremental Integration Testing tests the application continuously to make sure that the various added functions works perfectly.
- Integration Testing checks the modules when they are integrated with each other and heir dependency.
- Functional Testing deals with the output that the software provides due to specific inputs provided.
- System Testing provides test results for the whole system at a go instead of checking the various modules. It provides an all over the result for the entire software system.
- End-To-End Testing shows how the software you have developed will work in an environment which is same as the real world.
- Sanity Testing tests the software for its stability. It pushes the software to the extreme limits to show how it would work under pressure.
- Regression Testing one of the major types of software testing which covers the entire software and shows you the various modifications which the modules need for the software to be bug free.
- Acceptance Testing checks whether the software is up to the mark with the requirements of the customer or the end user who will in turn decide the popularity of the software.
- Load Testing checks how the software will react under pressure or excessive load. Various amounts of load are added to the system to check the response time under the condition and the functionality is thus checked.
- Stress Testing puts excessive stress on the software, even beyond the specified limits, and checks the productivity of the software under the additionally stressed environment.
- Performance Testing will check the performance ability of the system under various real world conditions that the software may face once launched in the market.
- Usability Testing checks the ease with which a new user will be able to adapt to the software, the user friendliness of the interface and the smoothness of the flow.
- Install/Uninstall Testing checks the ease of installation of the software and the various upgrades that will be available over time for the software as well as the time taken for uninstalling the same.
- Recovery Testing checks the time taken for the software to heal up from probable crashes, failures of hardware and other magnamous problems that it could face once launched for public use.
- Security Testing checks the ease or difficulty that the hackers will face to penetrate the particular software.
- Compatibility Testing deals with the way the software will react in the presence of various other software, the hardware of the system and the various operating systems that it is going to run on.
- Comparison Testing tests the software to its previous version so as to see how much stronger or weak it has become after the modifications.
- Alpha Testing is done in the house by creating a virtual or fake environment consisting of end users to check the real world experience.
- Beta Testing is the final testing done by the real world users who will be using the software in future too.
JackMartin 