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Functional Acceptance Testing: The Essentials

Tutorial number: 27

Functional testing is challenging whether you are working on an agile project that develops tests before developing system code, or working on a more traditional project that has left functional testing until the end. Different choices must be made in each situation in order to develop a successful functional testing strategy. It is crucial that automated functional test suites employ established testing best practices in order to avoid common pitfalls. Topics covered include:

1. Context: How functional tests fit into the overall spectrum of testing. Where functional tests fit into the overall project development cycle.
2. Strategy: A functional testing strategy is a collection of decisions relating to creating, maintaining, and executing functional tests. Various project characteristics drive these decisions.
3. Specification: Functional tests can be textual, graphical, tabular, or storyboarded. Emphasis is placed on developing a domain specific testing language, and other best practices for making your tests a valuable project asset.
4. Automation: Several tools are compared with respect to readability, maintainability, declarativeness, effort, results reporting, etc.
5. Case-Study: Description of a project that evolved its focus over time (from porting to enhancements), and how the functional testing strategy was developed to evolve successfully.

Beginner: This tutorial is appropriate for anyone that wants to learn how to improve the effectiveness of their functional testing.