Early Non Functional testing
Submitted by Stevan Zivanovic on Tue, 19/10/2004 - 15:57.
non-functional testing
It is a widely held belief that Non Functional testing should be done at the end of the Functional test phase and before/during/after User Acceptance testing.
In practice I believe that this adds too much risk to the programme. What happens if you find a performance defect that requires a major redesign of the functionality? Believe me, this does happen.
The common argument against this is that to create automated scripts, a stable User Interface is required.
From my experience, doing some small scale non functional tests very early on pays great dividends. It is worth investigating in running tests even towards the end of development testing of the software. As the software matures, so the scale and types of non functional tests can be expanded.
This method offers significant benefits to the project. Testing from a non functional perspective can bring new views on how the software functions at a stage where improvements may still be feasible. In a similar vein it provides early identification of significant issues. Also, it makes good use of you non functional test team, who can get involved early on in the testing and feel that any suggestions they make have a chance of being implemented.
In reading this article, don't forget that I'm not just talking about performance testing, but also reliability, usability and some of the other non functional test areas.
In practice I believe that this adds too much risk to the programme. What happens if you find a performance defect that requires a major redesign of the functionality? Believe me, this does happen.
The common argument against this is that to create automated scripts, a stable User Interface is required.
From my experience, doing some small scale non functional tests very early on pays great dividends. It is worth investigating in running tests even towards the end of development testing of the software. As the software matures, so the scale and types of non functional tests can be expanded.
This method offers significant benefits to the project. Testing from a non functional perspective can bring new views on how the software functions at a stage where improvements may still be feasible. In a similar vein it provides early identification of significant issues. Also, it makes good use of you non functional test team, who can get involved early on in the testing and feel that any suggestions they make have a chance of being implemented.
In reading this article, don't forget that I'm not just talking about performance testing, but also reliability, usability and some of the other non functional test areas.