With a plethora of new mobile and internet apps accessible today, businesses must improve the quality and utility of their products to meet consumer expectations and attract new clients. This is made feasible by regularly updating their products with new features.
What is a feature?
Applications are highly dependent on features. A feature is an addition or modification to the system that adds new functionality. A product’s features define it and set it apart from other similar products. From a business perspective, a feature should have characteristics that make it practical, easy to use, and efficient. Since any kind of feature rollout directly impacts the user experience, it is important to always conduct tests before making it available to the users.
What is feature testing?
Feature testing is the procedure that is performed when a new feature is introduced to the application or an existing feature is modified. It can also be defined as the process that is used to test several iterations of the feature to find the most successful version of the feature that offers the greatest user experience.
A further objective of feature testing procedures is to confirm that the new features work as intended and adhere to all technical requirements and business criteria. Testing for potential bugs, failures, and disruptions is crucial since once delivered, the new additions must integrate seamlessly with the current ones.
Useful details about feature testing:
- Tests for new features are done the same way users would test them. To ensure the user experience, the error-free version of the feature is finally deployed, but not before it is inspected and checked for possible bugs.
- It follows an end-to-end testing methodology that is carried out just before the new feature is integrated into the program.
- Feature testing is often conducted by a QA team or a single tester.
Types of feature testing
Quality Assurance testers have access to several effective testing types that may be used to create outstanding test cases and assure suitable feature testing, including:
Unit testing
Automated unit testing often verifies that application components function as expected.
Smoke testing
Tests that look for “minor” flaws that may compromise the application’s functionality
Integration testing
Software components are merged and tested for overall functionality.
Regression testing
These tests are used to verify if the developed software continues to function correctly post modifications.
Security testing
Identifies any vulnerabilities in the program that may affect the protection of customers, data, and services (particularly in light of the new GDPR regulations, security testing is essential!).
Usability testing
A manual process that evaluates a product’s design and user interactions.
Advantages of feature testing
Several advantages of feature testing are enlisted below:
- It is simple to determine the product’s surroundings.
- assists in acquiring feature metrics and validating them.
- Software’s foundational components may be tested.
- This testing allows for the monitoring of multiple integrations.
- You can examine the many software product configurations.
- Bugs and problems can be detected early on.
- The software may be of high-quality thanks to continuous testing and release.
- The program may be improved and made successful.
Steps to perform feature testing effectively
Before starting the process of feature testing, the development team must initially concentrate on the existing application and how the new feature integrates with it. Each part in this case must have a clear, distinct function, and the team should record the related business requirements.
The team should also be aware of how the functionality of the new features will be impacted by the current features. From a design perspective, it’s crucial that the application’s new and unique features operate in concert and smoothly coexist. Let’s now examine the procedures for successfully testing new features:
Understand the feature
The most vital thing is to fully understand the actual need or specification relating to that feature. The team should lay out the rationale for introducing the new feature, its primary functions, and the standards and criteria it must adhere to at this stage. The team will benefit from this knowledge as they test the product.
Create test scenarios
To account for all potential test situations, teams need to develop many test scenarios. This process makes sure that every feature is properly tested to find any problems or flaws.
Prepare positive and negative datasets
Before the testing begins, the testers should have test data that accounts for all potential negative, positive, and borderline scenarios to monitor faults and problems in the new feature. This allows testers to experiment with all potential user paths – both good and negative – and determine if everything works as intended.
Gather knowledge of how the feature has been implemented
The next step for teams is to increase their understanding of all the components involved in implementing the feature. This would include being aware of all the modifications done to the backend to implement the functionality. As a result, the testers will be able to identify errors promptly and implement adjustments as needed.
Test the build in the formative stages
Early in the development cycle, developers should start testing the features to ensure there aren’t any persisting problems that may become more severe after the feature is fully constructed. This enables developers to address bugs quickly and match the feature to customer requirements. Repeating the same procedure should be done for all release builds.
Monitor testing performance
The performance of the application may be impacted by the addition of a new feature. To prevent consumers from complaining that the application is too sluggish or isn’t functioning properly, it is worthwhile to invest some effort in performance testing.
Methods of feature testing
The following techniques may be used in feature testing:
A/B testing
A/B testing is carried out to compare multiple versions of an application to determine which performs better.
While conducting A/B testing, a few considerations must be evaluated, such as the number of people who use the program, how engaged those users are with it, and how many users stick around or abandon the platform.
The function is initially made available to a small number of users, bearing in mind the type of consumers that would utilize it. The functionality is then made available to users once the application has been adjusted as per user feedback.
A/B testing techniques such as server-side testing enable exploration by enabling you to perform complex tests that go beyond UI or aesthetic modifications and test deep inside your tech stack.
Field testing
Field testing entails assessing a feature’s usability or behavior from the standpoint of the end user. By putting the new feature through a real-world test, testers can more easily verify it.
Conclusion
Feature testing is one of the key testing processes, which aids in the introduction of new features for commercially accessible software and applications.
It facilitates the stakeholders in enhancing the product’s quality by changing an existing feature or adding a new, beneficial function that is quickly accepted by the users. Feature testing before the release is essential.
