Start automating your tests 10X Faster in Simple English with Testsigma
Try for freeOver the years software design has become a lot more complex. They accommodate a lot of functional requirements that are often entangled with each other resulting in a series of dependent web of modules. In addition, there is a mix of technologies and a lot more elements to choose from than there used to be a decade ago. This evolution has made the job of a developer and a tester much harder defying the legacy random approaches to software development and testing. In reality, what a complex problem wants is a systematic and sorted solution which is provided by breadth testing in software testing.
Table Of Contents
- 1 What is breadth testing in software testing?
- 2 Importance of breadth testing
- 3 Uses of breadth testing
- 4 Should breadth testing be automated?
- 5 Automate Breadth Testing with Testsigma
- 6 Comparing breadth testing with depth testing
- 7 Integration testing with breadth testing
- 8 Balancing breadth testing and depth testing
- 9 Conclusion
- 10 Frequently Asked Questions
What is breadth testing in software testing?
Breadth testing is a testing mechanism to test the current status of required functionalities in the application without testing each functionality in detail. Once we conclude breadth testing, we can identify and list down what functionalities are complete, partial, or incomplete from the requirements template.
To understand the concept of breadth testing, consider an example of a web application that has multiple modules out of which one of the modules is to submit feedback through a form. While performing breadth testing as part of automated web application testing, the tester arrives at this module. He fills out the feedback form, puts down his name, email address, and feedback, and clicks “Submit”. He checks whether he gets an email as an end-user for acknowledgment and the support team gets an email for analysis. If these two boxes are checked, the module is correctly implemented and working fine as per breadth testing. However, what he did not test here is the validation of inputs provided, behavior under network problems, and of course, how this module behaves for various browsers.
The above example shows that the breadth testing is concerned only till verifying the implementation of the module. When we start testing the features one by one in detail, it is referred to as depth testing. So to understand the origins, one can say that the breadth testing tests the “breadth” of a module i.e. how it performs end-to-end within itself without breaking. The depth testing tests the “depth” of a module by peeling down each layer and testing the module inside out with special frameworks, tools, and methodologies. At this point, it is important to note that breadth testing can be performed either as part of manual testing or automation testing depending on the size of the project and the requirements it is serving.
Importance of breadth testing
From the first impressions of breadth testing, the testers may wonder about its importance in the crowded testing space. If the team will conclude the in-depth testing of each functionality at some point, why do we need to ensure it’s working before that? Why not stamp the module with “pass” or “fail” at the end of the complete testing cycle? Well, this section tries to establish the importance of breadth testing and the need to perform it before any other testing cycle:
- Establishes baseline testing: Breadth testing establishes the baseline testing process setting out benchmarks for the next versions to come.
- Early bug detection: Breadth testing can ensure that the functionality is working correctly on the surface or not. If it doesn’t, the team can get to know very early into the process which helps stop its escalation and rippling it out to other features as well.
- Establishing requirements: The main aim of breadth testing is to verify whether the requirements associated with the application are working or not. With its conclusion, we get an idea about these requirements and if there are any gaps, they can be handled in the early phases.
- Early requirement clarification: While most of the time the team gets things exactly as wanted by the client, a lot of the time this may not stand true. The team might develop correctly but then the client would want something additional added to it. Breadth testing can analyze the requirement and let the client know at this stage to keep the testing and development pipeline simple. If the changes are documented at this stage, there are not many dependencies across functionalities and the development becomes easy.
- Feedback to all testing domains: Breadth testing can analyze the surface part of almost all testing domains. This provides the quality assurance of the application from all angles.
- Optimum resource allocation: Breadth testing can analyze the functionalities that require more work ahead and the teams can therefore allocate the resources correctly as they progress to achieve their software testing goals.
Combining all these factors makes the team realize how important such type of testing is for the quality of the application and minimizing the workload of the teams as well.
Uses of breadth testing
Breadth testing can be used independently and the results can be shared across all the teams. Using breadth testing as an independent entity is perfectly fine and organizations do adopt it in their testing phase. However, when the project is large and there are a large number of teams working on one project, they will face two issues:
- Gathering all the testing requirements in a single place and arranging them orderly for breadth testing execution.
- Collaborating and distributing the collective results according to the testing type and repeating the process in a loop for the next execution cycle.
Due to these couple of issues and considering the lightweight nature of breadth testing, testing teams working on different domains try to adopt it individually and avoid all the mess. This will also make breadth testing specific and work only in a single dimension which will ultimately refine the quality of application. The testing areas where breadth testing can be adopted are:
- UI//UX testing: To analyze the user experience and interface.
- Integration testing: To analyze the communication-related bugs occurring after module integrations.
- Exploratory testing: To explore bugs in the areas that could have been missed by automation but would be explored by an end-user.
- Regression testing: To identify the bugs in new functionality that could be hurting the stable code.
- API testing: To identify the communication part between modules through API.
- Performance testing: To identify early-stage performance issues on a high level.
- CI testing: To identify any issues with the functionalities and the already constructed pipeline taking care of CI/CD for the software.
These testing domains do not get complex by adopting breadth testing in their regular schedule and neither put the burden on time as compared to their original (conventional) runs. Hence, if the two issues we discussed in the introduction are bugging you, this is a good alternative to maintain the performance and quality of the application.
Should breadth testing be automated?
With the high adoption of automation in various testing domains, it is natural to consider automation in breadth testing as well. However, a feasibility analysis may be required to figure out the right approach. Sometimes, automation is possible but with costs that are hard to recover i.e., the ROI is extremely low. In such a case, a manual approach is preferred but with additional costs and time.
Fortunately, breadth testing does not fall into the spell of low ROI. If anything, it is even easier to automate breadth testing because it works on the surface level and all we need are low-level test cases to make things work. For instance, consider the same application where the “Submit” button needs to be tested. A small Testsigma test case can fill up the fields and ensure the emails are sent through the function. It is, therefore, a good choice to automate breadth testing and include it in the automation cycle.
However, it is important to note that this functionality needs to be under full automation tests such as end-to-end or integration tests. Unit tests focus on individual units and can be considered a part of depth testing but not strictly.
Automate Breadth Testing with Testsigma
Automating breadth testing is a fruitful idea with good returns in a short period. However, it does not eliminate the challenges a tester faces with automation testing as a process. The pain of learning a programming language and struggling to create scripts with it takes up a large portion of our time ultimately pushing the deadline further ahead frequently. Ironically, a tester’s job should not even rely on writing code but on observational skills and finding issues in the software’s functionality. If we could eliminate these challenges and still leverage the power of automation, the life of a tester would be much easier.
Testsigma plays a vital role in easing out a tester’s job by providing a platform that accepts the English language as a medium for scriptwriting. By removing the need for a programming language, the testers can focus on creating complex scenarios that ensure an application’s quality is always superior. The platform is open-source and provides a free tier with a quick signup.
Once signed up, the tester can chalk out the scenarios to test on the web application.
These scenarios can then be written in the English language as follows:
Natural Language Processing then interprets the sentences and takes appropriate actions on the application.
The test scripts can also include data, APIs, and visual testing bits to enhance the testing quality.
Once the scripts are ready for breadth testing, the tester also gets an array of real devices to run the web application. These tests can also be recorded, saved, and run again on a different device in the future. This way, Testsigma provides one of the best automated solutions for breadth testing according to the needs of testers, developers, and the organization as a whole.
Comparing breadth testing with depth testing
Depth testing is another testing methodology adopted along with breadth testing to enhance the overall quality of the application. Mathematically, depth testing is used on a different axis than breadth testing. If breadth testing focuses on all the functionalities but only at the surface level, depth testing picks up each of those functionalities and digs deep into them to explore their glitches. Theoretically, they may seem contrary to each other but in reality, they complement their work and combine their result for the greater good.
Depth testing generally does not care about how functionalities are coming out as a whole system. However, it focuses on making each functionality robust by testing them thoroughly. Therefore, as the team decides which testing method should be involved with breadth testing (discussed in the previous section), they need to do the same with depth testing as well. For instance, if we know depth testing will take care of each functionality, it is a great idea to include it with integration testing which will take care of the complete integrated system, hence covering all the testing areas.
So the question arises, should we go for depth testing or breadth testing, or both? And what should we do when we have less time and can select only one of them?
The choice between depth testing and breadth testing is not about priority but more about compatibility with the situation the team is facing. If the team thinks that the testing domains they will work with will suit well with breadth testing, then that could be the best way to go ahead. For instance, exploratory testing may require breadth testing more than depth testing. Similarly, integration testing will complement well with depth testing. Using them both in all the phases of testing is generally recommended but unlike breadth testing, depth testing needs time and resources. This becomes a major hurdle, especially with small-scale organizations looking to spend their resources wisely.
Integration testing with breadth testing
From the list of different software testing types supporting breadth testing, one type takes a special place which is integration testing. In integration testing, the testing team integrates all the modules one by one to test the system as one whole unit. To improve this method and refine the involved processes to know the exact point of failure, integration testing is popularly performed in two ways:
- Top-down approach.
- Bottom-up approach.
As the name suggests, the top-down approach starts from the higher level and moves towards the sub-levels of it sequentially. The opposite of it is the bottom-up approach that starts from the smaller sub-components and moves its way further up. In each of these approaches, the team needs to follow multiple steps with different modules to get the correct point of error. Conventionally, integration testing will start exhaustive testing in each of those steps which takes a lot of time. However, we can reduce the amount of work in cases where the bug was at the surface level and shorten the delivery time.
Breadth testing and depth testing are a good combination to achieve the same goals especially when it comes to the top-down integration testing methods. The idea here is to first test the integration of two or more modules at the high level to just get the analysis of whether they are working together or not end-to-end. This is achieved with breadth testing. If the tests are successful, the team can proceed to confirm the integration with a detailed testing analysis with depth testing as a next step.
Integration testing is an excellent example of understanding how one can leverage the power of breadth testing and depth testing to their advantage. In the end, it becomes the question of how to make their use in the project efficiently instead of deciding which one of them to use.
Balancing breadth testing and depth testing
Breadth testing and depth testing work in different dimensions. While each of them can be adopted individually, it is recommended to use both of them for a better testing cycle. However, in this endeavor, it is possible that the team starts moving in one direction unknowingly due to any reason. For instance, a lot of depth testing may start to get implemented as the team may think it is exploring more bugs than the other one. This results in an imbalance due to which the team starts losing the benefits of one of the testing methods.
Creating a balance between breadth testing and depth testing generates an optimum quality from both sides. It helps the team cover all the necessary parameters provided by both testing methods and upgrade the quality of the application. It is the job of the testers to analyze whether we are moving correctly in both directions or not. The whole point of discussing this section is to make the testers aware of this situation as sometimes the steps they take are irreversible. It is advisable to regularly keep such things in check. A good balance helps in correct risk analysis and generating a perfect plan for the future even if it means through multiple iterations.
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Conclusion
There exist numerous scenarios in which a tester would just want to ensure that the functionality of their modules is working correctly based on the requirements. They might not be interested in ripping out the feature and testing it inside out. But, what they really want is to ensure they are on the correct track and all the modules mix perfectly.
Breadth testing in software testing is the most optimum path to choose when we do not want to invest time in deep testing but also make sure that our functionality works well. This type of testing works well on the surface level and provides a high-level overview of the complete application in the shortest time possible. The testing team can also add depth testing along with it to make things more efficient but paying with it the cost of time, however. This post tries to highlight all these variations, benefits, and methods. The analysis helps us make sure that breadth testing gets adopted in the projects and that the team does not spend too much time in cases where a simple breadth testing execution would have been enough.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the breadth of the test cases?
The breadth of test cases refers to its vastness and diversity with respect to the application. The more scenarios and conditions test cases cover, the broader its breadth is considered to be.