Testing in Software Development: Understanding the Levels

While developing software there are many things required apart from programming and designing. One of the most important factors to go about testing in software development. In this article, we are going to learn about testing and what is the level of testing and how to use it in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Introduction

Testing can become a very handy process because it helps to track bugs and defects before the software gets published. This may sound like anyone can do a test but no, there is a proper level of testing that must be completed during the testing in software development.

Testing software often made development a lot easy because it helps in finding bugs or defects. This increases the overall user experience of software and can be great for developers to maintain the software build.

What is the term “Testing Levels” or “Levels of Testing”?

The term testing level actually means to follow the instruction to find bugs or errors that are occurring in the software applications. There are proper instructions and testing levels that should follow to mitigate the bugs in your application at a minimum.

These levels of testing provide the assurance and functioning of the software by locating bugs and errors, which helps developers to fix them and then again test them to check if the bugs or errors get resolved or not.

Documentation is something that should be prepared while doing any testing on the software.

Types and Levels of Testing in Software Testing

There are a total of four levels of testing that should be performed during the testing in software development. Let’s take one of each and understand it better by evaluating all the points which are necessary to understand the testing life cycle properly.

Unit Testing

Unit testing is said to be the first testing that is done by the developer or sometimes the tester in the software development process.

Unit Testing Definition

Unit testing is one of the software testing types which tests the small parts or components of the software, which helps to find errors and bugs in the software application.

Primary Objective

The main goal of unit testing is to find bugs as early as possible in the software development life cycle. This prevents big crashes that can happen in the future if unit testing is not performed properly.

Advantages of Unit Testing

• Provide early adoption and easy-to-fix defects
• Helps in maintaining the software and preventing it from big crashes in the future.
• Early adoption led to less cost of doing testing
• Detecting bugs and fixing them during the testing in software development.

Disadvantages of Unit Testing

• Unit testing works on small components and individual parts so it is difficult to write test cases for all of them.
• It is not capable of catching all the errors and bugs with just this testing.

Integration Testing

Integration testing works to make the small parts or modules combined together which are tested on the unit testing level and test them. These tools like Selenium can be used to do integration testing in software development.

Integration Testing Definition

Integration testing works after unit testing, it takes each component or module and tests them as a group of test cases.

Primary Objective

The main goal of integration testing is to mainly check and verify whether the components or modules work together properly or not.

Advantages of Integration Testing

• Works on solving more errors because of more coverage in testing.
• Easy to resolve or fix bugs at the integration level because it is not much complicated as compared to unit testing.
• It also offers more reliability and assurance while performing this testing.

Disadvantages of Integration Testing

• During the integration testing there are some modules that are used and if not used correctly can result in to crash.
• It is not easy to perform as compared to system testing
• Proper direction should be followed while using integration testing like bottom-up and top-down testing.

System Testing

System testing is also said to be the third level of testing. It works to identify the error and bugs in the system by taking requirements into consideration.

System Testing Definition

All modules and components are tested together in the environment setup. That helps in finding bugs and checking whether the specific requirement is met or not.

Primary Objective

System testing ensures that all the modules are working together smoothly and also checks the environment of setup.

Advantages of System Testing

• It covers basically whole software testing and runs on an operating system environment.
• It also covers all the underlying testing like architecture and workflow.
• Solving bugs and errors is easy compared to integration testing.

Disadvantages of System Testing

• Time-consuming as it tests the whole software.
• It is also not cost-friendly due to effort and business needs should be fulfilled and consistent during the testing in software development.

Acceptance Testing

Acceptance testing is said to be the last and final level of testing. It ensures and covers some errors or mistakes that are not detected in the other testing. And this determines whether the software is going to release to the public or not.

Acceptance Testing Definition

Acceptance testing defines whether a software build is functioning properly or not whether the requirement is fulfilled and user experience is good.

Primary Objective

The goal of this testing is to find out the user’s overall acceptance related to the product or software application.

Advantages of Acceptance Testing

• Helps in identifying the bugs and errors which are not detected in other testing.
• Provide a way to test the software and check whether all the requirements are met or not.
• This boosts assurance and reliability because the client gets the chance to check the software’s functioning.

Disadvantages of Acceptance Testing

• Ample resources and management are needed.
• No control over test cases.
• Difficult to make changes and test the progress again.

Conclusion

Testing in software development is something that hard to ignore and performing the testing properly is the job of the tester. In this article, we have learned about testing and the level of testing, we also saw their in-depth explanation.

Frequently Asked Questions to Resolve (FAQs)

What is testing in software development?

Software development requires testing of software to check and validate that the application is working which helps in finding errors or bugs.

What are the 4 levels of testing?

Four levels of testing are as follows:

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

What is testing and what are its types?

Testing is known as checking and finding errors in the software development life cycle and the types of software testing are Integration testing, Unit testing, System testing, and Acceptance testing.

What are the 5 testing methods?

Testing methods comprise of unit, regression, functional, integration, system, and acceptance methods. It helps in making testing more accurate with each method and property.

How many levels of testing are there?

There are a total of four levels of testing including unit, integration, system, and last is acceptance testing. The levels of testing should be proper when used in testing the applications.