Software Testing: Definition, Types, and Importance
Published: 2023-01-12 13:15:09

The entire software development life cycle can be divided into multiple phases: ideation or workflow orchestration, development, designing, deployment, migration, and many more. But one of the most crucial phases is testing. 

Whether it is performance testing or functional testing, it has a lot of benefits in streamlining the software development life cycle. Furthermore, testing ensures the bugs and defects can be detected before code deployment into the live production server.
Keeping this in mind, we have illustrated software testing further, explaining its types and the benefits of each for your clarification. 

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## Functional or Manual Testing
From the name itself, you can understand that functional or manual testing is done by hand, where every step or functionality of the software is checked. Every test scenario has an expected result against which the manual testing results are compared. Testers give a green signal only if the results are ideal and matching. 

## Benefits of Manual Testing
a. Manual testing is the basic testing level that only requires knowledge of the database and the application to be handled. 
b. It allows testers to check every software functionality, whether any UI component is working, visibility, or backend functionality.
c. Manual testing involves API testing when the independent application is integrated with any third-party software.
Performance testing

One of the major aspects of **<u>[software testing](https://qagenesis.com/)</u>** is performance testing. The results determine whether the application is performing in the usual manner. Several attributes are checked through performance testing, whether the application speed or the operational efficiency. 

## Benefits of Performance Testing
a. It helps validate the fundamental concepts and functionalities of the software under test. 
b. Any bug or defect in the application performance can be detected during the development phase only before the codes are merged with the UAT or production environment.
c. The stability and accuracy of the application's functions can be easily known based on performance testing. 
d. It helps reduce the discrepancies and easily takes user experience up by several notches.

## Automation Testing
Another set of testing practices is automation testing. Usually, it is done based on a testing suite where multiple scenarios are coupled together and can be tested in a single flow. Usually, regression and sanity checks are done through automation testing before and after code merges. 

## Benefits of Automation Testing
a. With automation, manual labor can be easily reduced by a significant level. 
b. Also, automation testing introduces more efficiency in the overall testing suites. 
c. Multiple functions can be checked at a time with the help of automation testing. 
d. All the defects in a single process are detected at a time and displayed on the console.

## Stress Testing
Another important branch of testing is stress testing. It is done to check how fast the software can recover and resume its functionalities after a major failure. The failure can be in terms of software downtime or a change that has been deployed.

## Benefits of Stress Testing
a. Software performance during failures or functional disruptions can be easily known with the help of stress testing.
b. Also, the testing helps developers understand the damage to the datasets stored in the database or the local server where the software was deployed. 
c. Making strategies for crash recovery becomes easier with the results of stress testing. 

## Load Testing
Load is the total traffic the software gets once deployed to the server. Usually, load testing checks the software's performance and behavior based on different load values. Every software program can handle a certain load level. If it increases, either the software can crash or become slow. This is where the concept of load testing comes into play.

## Benefits of Load Testing
a. Load testing can help developers scale the software and increase its load-handling capacities. 
b. The load balancing algorithm can be easily developed with the results from load testing. 
c. System downtime risks can be reduced significantly to a much low level.
d. It helps understand how the software performs when accessed through multiple devices.

## Scalability Testing
As the name suggests, scalability testing primarily checks whether the software functions can be scaled as and when required. For instance, **<u>[testers](https://qagenesis.com/contact-us/)</u>** check if the functions can be scaled to accommodate multiple users at a time once the business progresses. 

## Endurance Testing
Endurance testing checks how the software will behave once it is subjected to different loads and how long it can endure a load value exceeding the recommended limit. It helps developers understand the software's ultimate capacity to deal with the load and determine the crash point.

## Benefits of Endurance Testing
a. With the help of endurance testing, it becomes much easier for developers to find the maximum level when the software will stop functioning as per the expectations. 
b. It also allows testers to determine the health or accuracy of the software’s functionalities when the load is increased.

## Volume Testing
Also known as flood testing, volume testing determines the software behavior when a huge data set is given as input. It is usually done to check the performance of different analytical software programs that work with different datasets simultaneously. 

## Conclusion 
This article has walked you through some major software testing types, including performance, load, scalability, and volume testing. Therefore, with this guide, you can easily understand how you need to orchestrate the testing phase of the software and deal with the reported bugs and defects.