Top 7 Ways to Control Functional Testing

The realm of software testing has undergone some significant and positive changes and shifts in the various types of processes and testing. One of the most noteworthy changes relates to the responsibility and how of testing. Top software testing companies now propagate that functional testing is the joint responsibility of the QA team in conjunction with developers. While developers have accountability to deliver the app to the QA team, it is the job of the QA team to concentrate on automating the tests, building test infrastructure, and ensuring the speedy uncovering and removal of bugs and defects.

Some front-end developers believe that the additional responsibility of functional testing could take away from the core jobs and slow down the entire process of getting the product to market. However, experts at any leading QA company would differ – new testing methods and tools have made functional testing a lot simpler and easier, with its benefits outweighing the time and efforts invested into this form of testing.

Additionally, working together with the QA team means that developers do not need to focus on regression testing and bug removal. By integrating functional testing as part of the developing schedule, new features and time to market are significantly hastened. Without functional testing at the start, bugs and new features would take up a lot more time and effort. We will look at the top 7 ways that developers can control functional testing, and gain mastery over it.

The experts at a software testing company would tell you that testing is best done in a testing lab – and not on the machine. It makes business sense for organizations to have a local or cloud, testing lab. The QA automation testing team must use the local lab and its methods or work with cloud-based testing tools. This saves time and effort in managing infrastructure

Since timing and management of test cases are of prime importance – it would be better to create a test case in functional testing while creating a feature. It is imperative to be aware of some components while writing a feature – page objects for a new feature, URLs associated with the feature, and others. It would make sense to note down these test details in pseudo, and even though this does not create the test, it does help to remember the type of Software testing, and simply use the details to swiftly create them when required.

Without segregating visual and user flow test cases, you could end up with a never-ending test case. The reason is that user flow test cases need to have a higher level of complexity and include page objects and their interactions with them. The test needs to emulate user actions and can flow to several pages. On the other hand, it is easier to script a visual test – load and snapshot all the pages and compare the screenshots to recognize any current changes in the application. Since everything is tested visually it provides a view of all major changes from any previous releases – therefore predicting this test is not required.

Remember regression tests are important. Even though the QA team would run such tests, any problems could mean more work for developers. To ensure that there are no unwanted surprises, experts at top QA companies recommend the use of Continuous Integration tools, which automatically run regression tests. These tests would be written by someone else, all developers need to do is hit the run button while introducing new scripts to the suite.

Carefully select and use open source tools to ensure optimal benefit.

Everyone involved in functional testing must be aware of test scripts and the management of the suite. While the QA team would review scripts, the developers must ensure the tests are distinguishable and know which ideas can be shortened or cut off. This is important since failed scripts due to the removal of functionality could cause major problems in test runs.

Remaining calm and focused on functional testing in addition to all responsibilities as a developer, is important and an integral part of the process.

In Conclusion:

The quality of applications/systems/software is the responsibility of all those involved in functional testing. Developers and QA teams both are now an integral part of the testing process. Functional testing is amongst the more important testing processes – verifying the functionality of any software product. Businesses must partner with a top software testing outsourcing company to ensure they gain the benefits of functional testing – connect with us to work with experts across all realms of software testing.