Test automation makes everything easier. In fact, many QA teams automate repetitive tasks, such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing, regression testing, not just for the sake of efficiency, but so they can save time and effort.
According to a report, the global automation testing market’s size is projected to go from USD 12.6 billion in 2019 to USD 28.8 billion by 2024, making it one of the biggest testing trends being adopted by organizations.
Automated functional testing, similarly, is designed to ensure faster test coverage and more efficient development of test cases. It’s about getting the user’s point of view based on the software’s robustness.
In this post, we’ll discuss automated functional testing as part of UTOR’s experience in providing both functional and automation testing services. This would include helpful tips to create functional test cases. To begin, let’s first understand what functional testing means.
What is functional testing?
Functional testing investigates the software’s functionalities to know if they function according to some specified requirements. This testing involves checking the system’s user interface and understanding how the user interacts with the system. We try to see whether all functionalities respond to the user action.
The purpose of functional testing is to assure that the software fulfills the requirements of the stakeholders. It is not user testing, but rather the testing of each action the program must take. Test case scenarios are developed because simply testing one action at a time is not enough.
Let’s use a light bulb as an example.
To determine if it works as it should, the bulb lights up when you turn on the switch and lights off when you turn off the switch. The primary intention is to know if the OFF/ON parts of the controller do what they were designed for and not understand how they work.
Usually, only QA teams conduct this type of test; however, external testers must be invited to run the tests also. This indicates the need to use the black box testing technique to confirm all functions. While carrying out a black box test, testers should be unaware of the internal architecture of the application.
Recommend: Learn the difference between functional and nonfunctional tests.
Types of functional testing
Functional testing goes beyond the activities realized within the four levels of testing. Here are common functional test types done throughout the development cycle.
It’s a functional testing type including single units to identify any issues in them. It is associated with the functional accuracy of the standalone modules.
Integration testing is a software testing level where separate components are coupled and tested to establish if they are operating as they should when combined. The foremost intention here is to examine the interface connecting the modules.
System testing tries to increase reliance on the system’s quality as a whole. System testing further seeks to locate and stop errors and to stop them from slipping to higher test levels or production. Additionally, it is the sole test involving the full system (just before the User Acceptance testing).
User acceptance testing (UAT) is the last stage of the software testing process. The end goal of User Acceptance Testing is to evaluate if the system can sustain day-to-day activities and user scenarios and assure satisfactory and suitable usage.
The idea of regression testing is to expose the unexpectedly injected bugs and to guarantee that defects eliminated earlier aren’t recreated. In this way, regression testing ensures code modifications don’t change the present application features.
- Smoke
The main intent of smoke testing isn’t to catch bugs in the software, but rather to assist the test team to learn where they’re starting from. Smoke testing gives developers a goal and supports them to recognize when they’ve reached a stable point.
- Sanity
This testing serves as a checkpoint to resolve whether or not the build’s testing will advance. This testing intends to assure that the alterations or suggested functionality are running accurately. If the sanity test fails, the testing team declines the build to save time and money.
What is automated functional testing?
In practice, one of the most notable issues of functional testing is the incompetence of the testing team to cover the entire product area.
Assume if each test case of a functional test was performed manually, particularly if the tests are repeated. It would be difficult and time-consuming to cover all of them. The test coverage will be less than planned and fall short of the predicted results.
This is where we necessitate automation to save time, effort and increase overall testing capacity. Automated functional testing takes over repetitive testing processes from people, freeing teams to focus on strategy to grow other business aspects.
Test cases for automating functional testing
Like in every project, team members receive individual tasks that they will be responsible for and report the final results. But to clarify these roles, an appropriate plan should be in place to indicate specifically each member’s duty.
Test cases in functional testing represent consolidated testing plans and tasks assigned to testers. For example, test a function to know if it achieves its intended purpose.
A functional test case should contain the next:
- Test description or names of functions to be tested, e.g complexity or size of the software.
- Prerequisites or pre-requirements so the tests can be executed, eg.
- Plan of action
- Outcomes.
Here are the steps you can take to write test cases
- Ascertain the particular areas to test
- Outline the features to test. Begin with existing features and extend the new ones.
- Check the software application to know which tests to run separately or combined.
- Write test cases.
- Delegate the tasks to testers. Using the above structure will be helpful.
- Design and allocate exploratory tests
Best automated functional test tools
About 93% of organizations prefer Open Source Tools for carrying out functional testing, with 80% of surveyed groups using Selenium as the main open-source tool for automating functional tests. Other useful resources we use at UTOR include the following:
- Appium.
- Tricentis Tosca.
- Sauce Labs.
- TestComplete
- Selenium.
- Worksoft Certify.
- Micro Focus LeanFT.
- Parasoft SOAtest.
Benefits and challenges of functional test automation
According to the Test Project’s survey, 77% of businesses conduct functional testing in every sprint, increasing the demand for automated functional testing to ensure considerable test coverage. Besides that, these are reasons to automate your functional tests
- To reduce time and effort spent on testing
- To minimize human error potential when testing
- To manage tests on repeat
- To manage large scale projects
- To release software that satisfies both the user and business demands
- To cut down long term testing costs.
On the downside, over 50% of surveys noted that lack of time necessary to familiarize the tools was the top challenge.
- Lack of technical skills among software engineers.
- Unrealistic expectations of how much test areas can be covered.
- Test data management
- High initial costs to acquire automation tools and human resources
To Sum up
Does the application meet the user’s expectations? Does it effectively cover all business requirements? Does the system respond to the user inputs? Can your existing tools meet a substantial coverage of the tests?
These are the essential questions that automated functional testing helps teams to answer.
Software products today need to be efficient and sound. If your team still uses manual tests for functional testing, odds are they will struggle to achieve the anticipated results.
To begin automating your tests, we recommend you first learn some actionable strategies for automating tests.
