A Brief Introduction to Software Testing
By: Sara A. Metwalli
Tags: Machine Learning, Software Development, Editors Pick, Data Science, Programming

In software development, any code needs to go through a set steps before it can be released. Regardless of the application field, the target audience/ platform, or size, all developers must go through the software development process.

This process consists of 6 main steps: collect project/ application requirements, analyze these requirements, design the software, test and debug, deploy, and maintain the project.

Arguably the most critical step of the process is the testing step. Although the testing step comes after the design step (which includes design, outlining, and implementing the code) in the cycle, in practice, testing goes in parallel with writing the code.

Photo by the author (made using Canva)

The primary goal of software tests is to eliminate bugs in the code. However, there are additional benefits a project can gain from a good testing process. Benefits such as enhancing performance, user experience, and security of the overall project.

Often, when working on big projects, the team is divided into several sections. Each has its development task, and each task has its standalone functionality. These tasks are then combined to form the overall software product. That’s why each part must undergo its own testing process to make sure it functions properly before it is added to the main project.

The question now is, what kind of testing should one use?

Types of Software Testing

There are many different types of software testing that you can use to make sure that your code is functioning as it should, and any changes to your code are not missing the entire functionality of the project. Although all testing techniques are useful, not all of them are equal. In this article, we will go through how different testing practices differ from each other.

Let’s get testing…

We can generally categorize software testing into two main categories: functional and non-functional testing.

Functional testing

Functional testing involves the testing of the functional aspects of a software application. When you’re performing functional tests, you’ve got to check each functionality in your code. You will need to ensure that each section of the code is functioning correctly. There are many types of functional testing, for example:

Unit testing. Integration testing. End-to-end testing. Smoke testing. Regression testing.

Non-functional testing

Non-functional testing targets the non-functional aspects of an application, like performance, reliability, usability, and security. Non-functional testing is aimed to improve the quality of your code. It isn’t easy to perform this type of test manually. So, these tests are usually executed using special testing tools. Some examples of non-functioning testing are:

Performance testing. Security testing. Compatibility testing. Usability testing. Scalability testing.

Functional vs. non-functional testing

The question is not whether to choose functional or non-functional testing, but rather what type of functioning or non-functioning testing should you choose for a particular application. The reason for this is, the purpose of using functional and non-functional testing is quite different.

You will use functional testing if you want to make sure all the component of your code is functioning the way they should. But, if you already know that everything is working correctly, yet you need to analyze the performance of the code, then you will use non-functional testing.