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May 12, 2023 - by Synoptek
If a software company wants to succeed in leading in the era of technology, user experience has to be a top priority. Even though this sounds obvious, not every software company provides an intuitive or seamless user experience.
QA software testing is an integral aspect of the software development lifecycle, ensuring products that reach users meet the required quality, security, availability, reliability, and scalability standards.
Simply put, quality assurance (QA), or failure prevention, is the prevention of failures from occurring in the future by improving the process. Quality control (QC), or failure detection, is the process of detecting, correcting, and modifying the product to meet standards.
When it comes to the different types of QA testing, the only two types that come to anyone’s mind are manual testing and automated testing. Manual testing involves setting up a testing environment and executing testing tools by hand. With testers having to manually interact with the software, this can lead to increase costs and human error.
Automated testing, on the other hand, utilizes test automation scripts, which are more reliable and accurate and can free testers from repetitive and mundane tasks, so if you prefer your testers to work on more critical and creative tasks, automated testing is ideal. Automated testing accelerates the testing process while making it far more dependable and error-free.
But did you know there is a range of other types of QA testing you can conduct to make sure your code – and any changes you make to it – works as expected?
Every software tester often comes across a variety of QA testing types: some they’ve worked on, and some they’ve heard of. Unfortunately, not everyone is aware of the different types of QA testing and the role they play in the overall quality of the product. At a high-level, testing can be differentiated into manual and automated; but when you dive deeper, there are several other forms. Here are 10 different types of QA testing:
A type of testing that’s conducted at the ground level, unit testing is low-level testing carried out to test individual units or functions of the software under development. With unit testing, developers focus on testing during the early stages of building software to ensure that each section of your software application meets certain standards. By testing each testable part of the product, unit testing helps to understand the underlying functionality of the code and test the probability of any change causing a fault that can then be quickly identified and fixed.
Component testing allows testers to test multiple units or components in a single code. By using real data and testing how different components work independently without integration, component testing helps identify defects that may arise once the components are connected to each other.
The next stage in the QA testing lifecycle is integration testing, which verifies if the different modules or services used by your application work well together. By combining different components into a group and testing them, integration testing helps evaluate if the system or component complies with the required functional requirements.
End-to-end testing helps in testing the functionality and performance of the product – under live settings. By replicating user behavior in product-like circumstances, end-to-end testing helps simulate a real-world scenario and verifies if the various user flows work as expected. Replicating user behavior and journeys helps test data integrity and intercommunication with other systems.
Performance testing allows testers to check the behavior of the system – when it is under significant load. Performance tests help confirm the reliability, stability, and availability of the product and verify if additional load is going to degrade the performance of the system.
Regression testing allows testers to test an application after a change or modification has been made. By running functional and non-functional tests, it ensures that previously developed and tested software performs as expected – post bug fixes, software enhancements or configuration changes. Ensuring that recent codes and additions are working properly improves the ability to run automation smoothly.
Sanity testing is a form of regression testing that helps testers determine if new code changes or feature updates perform well enough to undergo a major testing effort. If the application crashes, it means the system is not stable enough for further testing, and an additional build is assigned to fix the problems. The objective of sanity testing is not to thoroughly verify the functionality of the software, but instead to measure if the complete build of the software is proper.
System testing enables QA teams to evaluate how the different components of an application interact together in a full, integrated system. Based on overall requirement specifications, system testing focuses on testing the overall functionality of the application and ensuring every kind of user input produces the intended output.
Smoke testing involves checking the basic functionality of the application to determine if major features of the system are working as expected. Especially useful after a new build, smoke tests help in determining if more expensive tests need to be run on the application in the newly deployed environment. They also help reveal if failures are severe enough to reject a prospective software release.
The last test in the QA lifecycle, which is carried out just before the final release is user acceptance testing. It assesses if the product or application can handle real-world scenarios. By replicating user behavior, it checks if the system satisfies business requirements and rejects changes if certain requirements aren’t met.
In the world of software development, there is an array of different tests that must be carried out to ensure the product works as intended, for different users and under different circumstances. QA testing ensures the product you deliver to your users, meets necessary quality, reliability, and security requirements. Being aware of the different types of QA testing is critical to understanding what tests to carry out at what stage of the development lifecycle.
Consider the advantages of outsourcing QA testing and engage with a qualified QA testing partner today to create superior products and deliver exceptional experiences to your users.
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