Creating robust software that’s able to perform in a variety of edge cases is challenging and complex. Even a small bug or mistake in the code can lead to catastrophic outcomes. For example, a hyphen that was omitted from the code destroyed NASA’s Mariner spacecraft, which resulted in an $18.5 million loss (approximately $169 million today). So, you can imagine why it’s critical to have software testing strategies.
Businesses realize this, and that’s why the software testing industry was $51.8 billion in 2023 and is estimated to grow 7% from now to 2032. Developers need to conduct rigorous testing to catch defects early, mitigate risks, and ensure quality.
In this guide, we’ll explore various types of software testing, test strategies, and best practices to improve your software testing approach.
What Is Software Testing?
Software testing is when developers validate whether the software application is meeting the business and technical requirements. Software testing involves multiple methodologies. Each of these serves distinct objectives, checking for functional correctness, performance efficiency, and security.
Types of Software Testing
Are you wondering what the four main testing types are? Here are the common ones:
- Functional testing verifies that the software is operating according to business requirements. Project teams typically use a business requirements document to capture functionalities needed for an application. The product owner translates these into a product backlog. This backlog can continue to grow as the business requirement evolves. Developers ensure all required functionalities are met until the project is done.
- Nonfunctional testing assesses performance, security, and usability. Take an example where an application needs to have a runtime that’s under 30 minutes due to the nature of data flow from upstream and downstream. Additionally, the application should be protected against DDoS attacks. Such requirements are captured as part of nonfunctional tests.
- Regression testing checks that changes to your application will be deployed without unexpected consequences. As you continue to develop your product, it’s inevitable that you’ll have to continuously update it. With regression testing, you ensure new updates won’t break existing functionality.
- Exploratory testing involves running unscripted tests to uncover unexpected bugs. For example, testers might test a numbers field by inputting letters to see if any unexpected behavior occurs.
Manual vs. Automated Testing
Software testing can be broken down into two categories:
- Manual testing is human driven. It’s usually effective for exploratory purposes and testing user experience.
- Automated testing involves scripts and automated toolsets to execute tests at scale.
Imagine you’re a product manager for a banking app. You’ll most likely employ manual testing to validate user interface elements. However, it makes more sense to use automated scripts to test thousands of transaction scenarios in order to see if the code performs satisfactorily.
Test Strategy Development
Now that you understand the basics of software testing, let’s talk more about testing strategy.
As you develop your software, you’ll need an effective test strategy for each phase of your product life cycle. No approach is one size fits all.
Development teams might be tempted to develop a test strategy on the fly. This isn’t recommended. The haphazardness can eventually be a source of unstable software, overrun timelines, and bloated development costs. Instead, you should ensure the test strategy is based in need and aligned with leadership.
While you develop a good strategy, it’s helpful to remember the three P’s in testing: people, process, and product. All three need investment and focus to be able to create great code.
Let’s see how these play out when developing a test strategy.
Test Planning and Scheduling
Planning involves defining scope, identifying resources, and establishing timelines. You’ll need to be clear on what you’ll test and align the testers responsible for each test step.
Some testing occurs like a relay race, with multiple testers executing their tests in a sequence. Defining a schedule and communicating it well will help remove impediments to your test plan.
For instance, let’s say you have a UI/UX designer and developer working side by side with overlapping deliverables. You’ll need a test schedule for both to know when one piece is done and ready to be tested.
Risk-Based Testing
You can never test 100% of all cases. That’s why you need to prioritize testing based on the likelihood and impact of defects. In this approach, critical functionality is tested rigorously, while less critical components receive minimal testing.
For example, a health care system will prioritize testing drug delivery calculations for an automated drug dose administering algorithm over the feature where the user can upload a profile picture.
Defect Life Cycle and Management
Defects should be properly identified, reported, prioritized, fixed, and verified. A robust defect management system helps you get better visibility of issues and prevents them from recurring.
Performance Testing Strategies
A software’s definition of success isn’t based only on whether it meets business requirements. In fact, it also comes down to performance. Performance testing evaluates the system’s speed, scalability, and stability under various conditions.
As a developer, you should consider these factors while developing a strong performance testing strategy.
1. Security Testing Approaches
Security testing identifies vulnerabilities in your application that may be exploited by attackers. Techniques include penetration testing, static code analysis, and access control validation.
For example, the development team for a ticketing platform ensures its checkout process is protected against SQL injection attacks.
2. Integration Testing Methods
During sprints, your development teams might work in multiple sub-teams. The unit tests might have gone smoothly, but the critical part is bringing everything together. This is where integration tests come into play. In this phase, you should validate interactions between modules, data upstream APIs, and third-party services.
3. User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
In user acceptance testing (UAT), you focus on the core of your business application: the user. UAT helps ensure that your software meets the business requirements and expectations of the end user.
It starts with testers first developing a feature and then unit testing it. After that, you might perform integration tests before handing off the application to the user. The user will check to see if the objective of the application is being met. They’ll also test the UI/UX and see how usable the application is.
Once tests are passed, the application will move to production.
4. Continuous Testing in DevOps
Testing occurs at every stage—from code commits to production deployment. That’s why it’s critical to test continuously. By integrating automated testing into your application’s CI/CD pipelines, you can detect issues early.
5. Testing Frameworks and Tools
Frameworks help minimize the guesswork for your development team. Using a standard and expansive test library helps you cover the bulk of possible test cases for your application.
Measuring Software Testing Effectiveness
All this testing should, in effect, help make your software more stable. But how do you measure your testing effectiveness? Test quality can be measured via some key performance indicators (KPIs):
- Defect detection rate: This KPI is measured as a percent of defects detected while testing versus the number of defects in total.
- Customer-reported defects: Fewer defects detected by the customer means your test strategy is working well.
- Mean time to resolution (MTTR): This is the average time it takes for your development team to resolve a defect. It’s measured from the time a defect is detected until it’s remediated and then validated.
Best Practices in Software Testing
We’ve covered several testing strategies. But there are also some industry best practices that you can employ to make the testing strategy run more smoothly for your team.
- Shift-left testing: Instill the mindset in your team to incorporate testing early in the development cycle. Due to business pressure and tight deadlines, development teams might be tempted to develop first and test later. However, with shift-left testing, you test early and often. This avoids costly blockers down the road
- Parallel testing: During development, it’s not always possible to run hundreds of test cases sequentially, simply because it takes too much time. You can employ parallel testing by running multiple test cases simultaneously. This helps substantially reduce the time taken for testing.
- Mocking and stubbing: Software dependencies might not always be ready during the test window. This is where mocking and stubbing can help. The approach simulates the dependency so your team can test without having to wait for the dependency to be ready.
- Test-driven development (TDD): Write tests before coding to ensure clarity. This helps developers code with the end in mind. When they know that the definition of done depends on passing a test case, they’ll ensure their code is robust enough.
To better understand mocking and stubbing, take an example of an e-commerce platform where the pricing API hasn’t been developed yet. Testers for the platform can use mocking to simulate the API that feeds it this dynamic pricing. They don’t need to wait for all the dependencies to be ready, significantly helping reduce time in the overall process.
Ensuring Seamless Software Testing
Adopting the right testing strategy is critical for successful software delivery. Collectively, as a team, you’ll need to decide the testing type, performance test strategy, and the necessary toolchains. Testing can seem complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. You can streamline your testing strategy with Usetrace, an automation platform designed to improve efficiency, reduce manual effort, and ensure high software quality.
Are you struggling to keep up with growing test automation demands? Contact our team at Usetrace to see how we can optimize your testing workflow.
This post was written by Ali Mannan Tirmizi. Ali is a Senior DevOps manager and specializes in SaaS copywriting. He holds a degree in electrical engineering and physics and has held several leadership positions in the Manufacturing IT, DevOps and social impact domains.
