We all understand how challenging it is to own a business. To partially relieve the burden and prevent negative end-user experiences, companies may opt for functional testing.
To stay ahead of the curve in the highly-competitive market and build resilient businesses able to bring profit regardless of the changing global circumstances, companies strengthen their software solutions with advanced tech. Game-changing engineering such as generative AI, ML, Web 3.0, AR/VR, cloud computing, advanced connectivity, bioengineering, and others transform the way businesses operate today. Just have a look — companies already utilize AI for emotion detecting during job interviews or apply AR/VR for training staff.
Regardless of the technology that lies at the core of IT products, their operation should be tested before deployment to the production environment to eliminate any malfunctions, neutralize the chance of post-release rework, and optimize operational expenditure. No wonder the market size of QA services continuously grows and will comprise $90.39 billion by 2030.
Among all QA activities, functional testing stands out clearly, often being the first step of ironing out glitches and ensuring failsafe software operation. In this article, I’ll highlight the value of functional verifications for improving business performance and their most important aspects and best practices.
What functional testing can bring to the table
Product recalls, lost profit, user churn… If not addressed early, software bottlenecks can inflict considerable harm to business and even people’s lives. Just remember the case of a car manufacturer forced to recall 1 million cars because of the incorrectly working airbag or radiotherapy treatment planning and vision-correction software recalls all because of poor screening.
Therefore, functional testing comes to the fore. Open-minded businesses that pay due attention to this step can gain the following perks:
- Lower expenses. Because of interdependencies, complex business logic and architecture, an issue identified after IT products’ launch is pricey to mitigate. Multiple problems, especially those affecting the correct operation of the most vital functionality, may cost a fortune to fix. When addressing bottlenecks early in the SDLC, companies can prevent budget overruns.
- User contentment. When software is scrutinized to ensure alignment with specifications, user conversion rates increase as all the features work error-free and high level of user-friendliness is enabled.
- Faster results. Due to frequent and early verifications, project teams can neutralize any issues early, thus accelerating the overall software creation process.
- Ongoing enhancement. If QA teams perform functional testing on a regular basis, they ensure continuous software improvement, boost its reliability, and increase confidence in the released version.
Functional verifications to consider for failsafe software operation
To make sure the IT product serves end users well and isn’t prone to major or critical issues, QA teams receive builds previously verified with automated unit tests fulfilled by developers and then perform diverse types of functional testing, among which I’d highlight the most valuable for business:
New feature testing
Ongoing evolution is a crucial characteristic of any software product, over time it grows and obtains new demanded features to cater to the constantly evolving needs of the target audience. Therefore, it’s important to verify all new functionalities with new feature testing. For that, QA engineers scrutinize software requirements to understand how these latest features must work, compile a testing plan, write required scenarios, and verify fresh-from-the-oven software parts.
Business impact: project teams can minimize risks related to release delays and prevent user churn by ironing out software glitches early in the SDLC.
2. Integration testing
As modern software solutions often leverage microservices-based architecture and need to work in unison with other third-party systems, for instance payment solutions, QA engineers perform integration testing. They verify that all tested software elements that work error-free individually can seamlessly function together as an integral unity as well as make sure that the software communicates well with other external systems.
Business impact: project teams can lower the risks of post-deployment software crashes and ease further software updates, thus eliminating the probability of unexpected software behavior.
3. System testing
To make sure the entire software solution complies with set technical and functional requirements, QA engineers perform system testing. They confirm that all software workflows operate as expected, business logic works correctly, and no deviations from specifications occur.
Business impact: project teams can help prevent expensive software downtime, ensuring foolproof work round the clock.
4. Regression testing
Any software development process involves multiple modifications of code, as the IT product continuously grows while receiving new features and various upgrades. To confirm that no new defects have appeared after extensive code changes, QA specialists run regression tests. They define software areas that are most prone to issues and focus their efforts on them.
Business impact: project teams increase stakeholders’ confidence in the delivered software, ensure its high stability, and economize financial efforts by identifying and rectifying software glitches early in the SDLC.
5. User acceptance testing
Most often, acceptance testing is the final stage of the QA process, allowing specialists to confirm that the software can effectively cope with daily tasks performed by end users. Therefore, QA engineers run real-world end-user or business scenarios to make sure the software is robust, operates as it should, meets all functional requirements, and is ready for release.
Business impact: project teams can ensure very close to real software validation, requiring less post-release support, which contributes to driving project costs down.
Tips for strengthening functional testing value
Tip #1. The majority of functional verifications are extensive and time-consuming, especially when the IT product is large and is constantly enhanced by diverse upgrades. Opting for only manual testing can be challenging due to immense testing scope and limited time. Therefore, QA engineers can balance it with automated testing. By running ongoing parallel tests QA teams fast-track the testing process, significantly broaden the scope of performed tests, lower the chance of human errors, and free up the time of manual QA engineers allowing them to focus on other priority tasks.
Tip #2. Although testing is crucial for safeguarding software operation, it may be difficult and expensive for companies to establish and nurture in-house QA teams. In this case, quick access to highly-qualified specialists with rich technical and domain knowledge can be ensured with outsourced dedicated QA teams. They can swiftly join projects at any SDLC stage, smoothly embed into existing project teams, bring in required functional testing competencies, and ensure independent view on software quality. In addition, if project workload suddenly increases, they can be rapidly scaled to support necessary activities and ensure seamless releases.
Tip #3. To increase effectiveness and accuracy of functional testing even more, QA teams can leverage real physical devices. This way they can spot defects that can occur on diverse gadgets within the real-world usage, consider different OS and hardware specifics such as screen sizes, and gauge user-friendliness. To select the required devices, QA teams should analyze statistics on the preferences of the target audience and identify items based on their priorities.
Tip #4. During functional testing, it’s also important to establish the system of test cases prioritization. The QA team should first identify the most crucial software functionalities for business and run tests on them. This enables effective distribution of QA resources, lower churn levels due to error-free operation of business-critical features, and optimized expenditure due to early rectification of glitches.
Tip #5. The earlier software testing activities are performed in the SDLC, the better it is for business. If QA is perceived as an ongoing process rather than a small stage in the development, it’s quicker and more economical to remedy identified glitches, which positively impacts overall development productivity.
Final thoughts
I believe that when people want to achieve success in any area, preparation is the first and most essential step that can’t be skipped. The same rule is applied to the software development process. If a company wants to succeed with a state-of-the-art IT product that gives value to end users, it should be meticulously verified.
Functional testing serves this aim perfectly well. Different tests strengthened with test automation help ensure deep testing coverage, optimized time efforts and QA budget, and high confidence in a final product.
https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-to-boost-business-performance-with-functional-testing-60cdfb8d99c0