Surveys have found that around 70 % of defects occur during the product design phase, and by the time the error is discovered after a product is live, it can cost up to 100 times as much to fix it. The Key to mitigating this risk is Functional Testing.
During Functional Testing, a wide range of techniques are selected and applied in order to find defects before the product goes into production. SQS has developed its own testing methodology called ‘Test Case Specification’, which combines different best-practice approaches in order to ensure high quality test cases.Functional testing will differentiate the following test types:
- Function testing to test system functions and business functions
- Negative function testing to run necessary plausibility checks for processing screens and dialogues or external files
- Vertical integration and function testing to test business processes
- Horizontal integration and function testing to test business data records and their processing
- Data migration testing to test the migration of data from source to target
- Security function testing to test security functions and user profiles
- Regression testing at the system level to test old, unchanged functionality
- Regression testing at the system integration level to test old, unchanged functionality
The customer’s benefits at a glance:
The cost of fixing a defect increases at a high rate as the project matures. High-quality testing following the implementation of the code can go a long way towards mitigating the risk of defects materialising in the wild and costing an exponentially larger sum to fix. When your testing is based on the right techniques, you can identify and fix defects at much lower cost.- Selection of the right technique(s) for a given situation
- High quality test cases based on well accepted techniques
- Even better test cases through years of experience with these techniques
- Repeatable tests through documented test cases
- Better quality of the final product
- Higher customer satisfaction
Testing can be an activity that runs through the entire duration of the project, even beginning with the design phase where most defects are created. By starting your testing right at that phase you achieve further benefits:
First, you take pressure from the test phase. As projects are often delayed, the pressure on testing is increased because often the end of the project is fixed. The only option remaining is to cut testing to a minimum. Fight this by preparing your tests throughout the project.
Second, by specifying test cases early you can identify many defects before they are even coded, and resolution can be as simple as amending a sentence. Testers find defects in specifications because they add a new and critical viewpoint. This reduces the number of defects that are found at later stages and increases your cost savings even more. The SQS Test Case Specification methodology has proven very effective at discovering flaws in specifications.
The list of activities in Functional Testing includes:
- Test planning
- High-level test case specification including test requirements
- Specification and set-up of test data
- Low-level test case specification including test runs
- Test execution and evaluation
- Defect reporting
The customer’s benefits at a glance:
- Fewer defects in specifications lead to fewer defects during test execution
- Lower cost for fixing the defects that were found early
- Improved quality of specifications leads to fewer defects being created during implementation
- Less pressure on the testing phase, since it is part of the whole process instead of only beginning after implementation
