It is important to deliver high-level apps at the right time and within resource constraints. The desire to deliver a lot more but in less time has brought many challenges for the QA team. Quality is managed by functional testing and its importance increases with complexity.
However, functional testing services have many risks and challenges. However, strategies and best practices can help to sort out the problems.
What to test in Functional Testing?
The testers primarily use functional testing services to check the software’s functionalities. The areas focussed are:
- Accessibility: Testers run accessibility checks on the system to check whether they match accessibility requirements.
- Usability: The usability tests check whether the users can seamlessly navigate the system.
- Errors: It validates that your system performs well and throws error messages for debugging.
- Main Functions: It ensures the main functions work well.
What are the Various Types of Functional Testing?
- Unit Testing
In unit testing, the developers write test scripts. It will identify whether units of your software system match requirements or not. While running unit tests, code coverage is a key aspect. The test cases must cover line, method, and code path coverages.
Also Read: How does outsourcing to manual testing companies help in delivering quality products?
- Smoke Tests
The testers run this after the release of the build, ensuring the stability of the build.
- Sanity Tests
It is usually run after the Smoke test. The testers ensure the smooth functioning of key functionalities with this test.
- Regression Tests
Even though the developers add new code, make enhancements, or fix the bugs, the system must stay stable and work as per requirements. Regression testing ensures this stability. - Integration Tests
The Integration tests validate the functionalities of the system with multiple modules. These modules must work seamlessly together for an end-to-end scenario and an integration test helps you with this. - Usability Tests
Here the real end-users work on the product and run tests. It provides how the users interact with the product and their comfort levels. The organization utilizes feedback to incorporate changes.
What are the Challenges of Functional Testing Services?
A. Gathering Requirements
The requirements must be defined clearly and adjusted to changes.
● Requirements must be brought to a single place before moving elsewhere
● Requirements form the foundation for future work of your product and must be correct, to avoid issues at a later stage. 50 % of defects occur in this phase only.
B. Planning the test
It is important to find Functional gaps in the test plans at the right time.
C. Testing Strategy
Tests must be delivered within strict deadlines and with the utilization of proper resources. You cover test configurations in the best way.
D. Implementing Tests
● Overcoming the mismatch between functionalities and test plan is important.
● There are blocking issues in the various functional areas and for re-plan of the first plan.
Other challenges involve the total time taken for reappearing issues and fix them.
E. Managing Defects
● The challenges for defect management include ambiguity and incomplete reports and also inconsistent reports.
● There is a need to mostly define bugs in the report.
● Tracking inefficiently affects product quality.
F. Reporting
● Reports based on test results must be easily understood by everyone on the team.
● Reports must be detailed to make the process easy.
● A perfect QA report transforms QA insights into actionable next steps for your business.
G. Collecting Test Metrics
● The collection of test metrics has a mechanism to check the effectiveness and mark improvement areas.
● Increased competitiveness and complexities of apps require efficient and elaborate testing.
● Top-quality apps must be delivered within schedule and with limited resources.
Best practices of Functional Testing
Use Exploratory Testing
It can find potential bugs. However, the testers have the freedom to test how and when they find it suitable to do it.
The testers ensure how the app works rather not how it is put together. They find potential bugs in the functional aspects. The testers do not require any expertise in Java or Python but must have exposure to QA.
Automate Some Processes
Automation pays off since it can save you money and time. Instead of wasting your time running the same tests repeatedly, writing test cases for automation allows you to run thousands of tests at the same time.
But, it is not possible to automate all the functional tests. We can automate exploratory tests to a lesser extent requiring the creativity of testers. System and user acceptance testing must be done manually.
If you aim at achieving a top-quality product then a blend of manual and automated testing is required. One of the ways to do this is to create a Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM). It ensures that all business requirements are tested, either by automation tools or your testing team.
Plan the Execution of Test Cases
Test execution centers around testing specific workflows for your app. It is a critical aspect of functional testing. Testers work their way around a mobile app or a web app with test execution, ensuring they follow the pre-planned workflow. If you plan the test execution rigorously, you have a higher chance of covering all functionalities.
Test Early and Frequently
You must detect issues early in the software development life cycle (SDLC) so that they do not develop into a crisis. Identifying design issues of specific functions saves your organization money. You avoid issues at a later stage by incorporating techniques like unit testing in the design and development stages, without waiting till the last stage or the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase.
Work with an Expert Team
Hiring a professional team to render manual testing service company saves your time by focusing on testing strategies and analysis. So, it saves internal resources to develop new features and design app updates.
Conclusion
In this competitive market, it is important to deliver high-level apps at the right time and within resource constraints. The desire to deliver a lot more but in less time has brought many challenges for functional testing. But strategies and best practices ease your problems.
Hire a leading functional testing company to devote your time better in the development of new features.