The testing category that deals with how the system operates rather than the specific behavior of the system is called non-functional testing. Due to a lot of overlapping in the scopes of various non-functional requirements, the names of non-functional tests are often used interchangeably.
Types of Non-Functional Testing
Here are a few kinds of non-functional testing:
- Compliance testing
Check whether your application is following the technical standards of the regulatory body governing its use. Either the producer of a product or service or an independent body accredited for the same can do this assessment. Certification sometimes accompanies compliance testing.
- Documentation testing
This testing ensures that all the necessary documents are available for reference. The documentation must consist of knowledge about how to use the application and the information of all the improvements or changes made since it was first rolled out. The specifications of test cases, plans, test procedures, reports, and logs must also be documented. Documentation testing checks details as small as spelling and grammatical errors.
- Endurance testing
Testing a system when subjected to a typical production load for a prolonged time period is called soak or endurance testing. This method identifies problems such as memory leaks that can occur in the long run of an application.
- Load testing
To understand the system’s performance under normal conditions, we increase the load and look for the threshold that gives a good performance. Load testing is highly relevant for systems with multiple concurrent users. It is essential to find performance bottlenecks and make sure of the system’s stability.
- Localization and internationalization testing
In localization testing, the complete functionality and usability in a particular locale are checked.
This could mean testing the occurrence of language in the content made for a particular region or the date and time format displayed for users in a specific country.
Internationalization testing ensures the suitability of an application for adaptation into different languages or regions without making changes.
- Performance testing
Any application’s reliability, speed, robustness, and size are examined in performance tests. They evaluate the responsiveness and stability of the system in the presence of a particular workload.
- Recovery testing
Here we test the ability of our application to recover from hardware or software failures. This ensures the feasibility of the process of recovery and verifies backup facilities.
- Resilience testing
It observes how the software performs in chaotic conditions. It also looks at the retention of core functions or data under these circumstances.
- Security testing
This type of testing can identify any flaws in the security mechanism of your application. Confidentiality, authentication, integrity, authorization, availability, and non-repudiation are some essential requirements in this area.
- Scalability testing
Here we check the capability of our application to scale out or scale up with respect to any non-functional dimension. It can give you an idea of whether your application is suitable for expanding to a bigger user base or even a larger geographical area.
- Stress testing
It deals with the performance of your system under traffic spikes and unexpected pressure. Here, we increase the load to the extent that causes its failure, and we observe how it recovers.
This is used to check the upper limits of the system.
- Usability testing
Testing through a set of representative users will give us an idea of how the application feels to consumers. Also, the participant’s satisfaction with the product enables us to make necessary improvements to cater to big audiences.
- Volume testing
Volume testing tests the behavior of the system when it is dealing with large amounts of data. It is also called flood testing.
- Accessibility testing
To ensure that your applications are usable to several consumers, you should check various features that make them user-friendly to customers with vision or hearing loss and other cognitive or physical disabilities.