Most Important Manual Testing Definitions in Software Testing

What are the levels of testing?

In software testing, there are four testing levels.

• Unit Testing
• Integration Testing
• System Testing
• Acceptance Testing

What is Unit Testing?

Unit Testing is also called Module Testing or Component Testing. It is done to check whether the individual unit or module of the source code is working properly. It is done by the developers in the developer’s environment. Learn more about Unit Testing in detail.

What is Integration Testing?

Integration Testing is the process of testing the interface between the two software units. Integration testing is done in three ways. Big Bang Approach, Top-Down Approach, Bottom-Up Approach. Learn more about Integration Testing in detail.

What is System Testing?

Testing the fully integrated application to evaluate the system’s compliance with its specified requirements is called System Testing AKA End to End testing. Verifying the completed system to ensure that the application works as intended or not.

What is Functional Testing?

In simple words, what the system actually does is Functional testing. To verify that each function of the software application behaves as specified in the requirement document. Testing all the functionalities by providing appropriate input to verify whether the actual output is matching the expected output or not. It falls within the scope of the black-box.

What is Non-Functional Testing?

In simple words, how well the system performs is non-functionality testing. Non-functional testing refers to various aspects of the software such as performance, load, stress, scalability, security, compatibility, etc., Main focus is to improve the user experience on how fast the system responds to a request. testing and the testers need not concern about the source code of the application.

What is Acceptance Testing?

It is also known as pre-production testing.  This is done by the end-users along with the testers to validate the functionality of the application. After successful acceptance testing. Formal testing conducted to determine whether an application is developed as per the requirement. It allows the customer to accept or reject the application. Types of acceptance testing are Alpha, Beta & Gamma.

What is Alpha Testing?

Alpha testing is done by the in-house developers (who developed the software) and testers. Sometimes alpha testing is done by the client or outsourcing team with the presence of developers or testers.

What is Beta Testing?

Beta testing is done by a limited number of end-users before delivery. Usually, it is done in the client’s place. Learn more about Beta Testing here.

What is Gamma Testing?

Gamma testing is done when the software is ready for release with specified requirements. It is done at the client's place. It is done directly by skipping all the in-house testing activities.

What is Smoke Testing?

Smoke Testing is done to make sure if the build we received from the development team is testable or not. It is also called as “Day 0” check. It is done at the “build level”. It helps not to waste the testing time simply testing the whole application when the key features don’t work or the key bugs have not been fixed yet.

What is Sanity Testing?

Sanity Testing is done during the release phase to check for the main functionalities of the application without going deeper. It is also called a subset of Regression testing. It is done at the “release level”. At times due to release time constraints rigorous regression testing can’t be done to the build, sanity testing does that part by checking main functionalities.

What is Retesting?

To ensure that the defects which were found and posted in the earlier build were fixed or not in the current build. Say, Build 1.0 was released. The test team found some defects (Defect Id 1.0.1, 1.0.2) and posted. Build 1.1 was released, now testing the defects 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 in this build is retesting.

What is Regression Testing?

Repeated testing of an already tested program, after modification, to discover any defects introduced or uncovered as a result of the changes in the software being tested or in another related or unrelated software components.

Usually, we do regression testing in the following cases:

1. New functionalities are added to the application
2. Change Requirement (In organizations, we call it CR)
3. Defect Fixing
4. Performance Issue Fix
5. Environment change (E.g., Updating the DB from MySQL to Oracle)

What is the difference between Regression and Confirmation Testing?

Regression Testing: Testing team re-execute the tests against the modified application to make sure whether the modified code breaks anything which was working earlier.

Confirmation Testing: Usually testers report a bug when a test fails. Dev Team releases a new version of the software after the defect is fixed. Now the testing team will retest to make sure the reported bug is actually fixed or not.

What is Performance Testing?

This type of testing determines or validates the speed, scalability, and/or stability characteristics of the system or application under test. Performance is concerned with achieving response times, throughput, and resource-utilization levels that meet the performance objectives for the project or product.

What is Load Testing?

It is to verify that the system/application can handle the expected number of transactions and to verify the system/application behavior under both normal and peak load conditions.

What is Volume Testing?

It is to verify that the system/application can handle a large amount of data

What is Stress Testing?

It is to verify the behavior of the system once the load increases more than its design expectations.

What is Scalability Testing?

Scalability testing is a type of non-functional testing. It is to determine how the application under test scales with the increasing workload.

What is Concurrency Testing?

Concurrency testing means accessing the application at the same time by multiple users to ensure the stability of the system. This is mainly used to identify deadlock issues.