How Many Types of Software Testing Are There?

Introduction

In today’s world, there’s a seemingly endless selection of software applications to choose from. Consumers know this, and they refuse to settle for software that’s buggy and unreliable. Instead, they want software that’s been thoroughly tested to ensure that it’s functioning as intended and meeting all specified digital product design requirements, which is where the process of software testing comes in.

But despite how critical software testing has become, not many people apart from professional software testers know that there are over a hundred different types of software testing and understand the differences between them. This article is here to fix that, providing a complete list of types of software testing and explaining the major ones.

What is software testing?

Software testing is the evaluation of software to find if it behaves as expected and meets all business and technical requirements.

Because fixing software problems early is much easier than fixing them in the later stages of software development, software testing can save developers and the customer money in the long run, making it cost-effective.

Without software testing, there would be no way to guarantee that a software application doesn’t contain critical vulnerabilities that cybercriminals could exploit to get access to sensitive data. It’s widely known that even a single data breach can irreparably damage an organization’s reputation, so using software that hasn’t been tested would be suicidal.

Complete list of different types of software testing

1. A/B Testing
2. Acceptance Testing
3. Accessibility Testing
4. Active Testing
5. Ad-hoc Testing
6. Agile Testing
7. Alpha Testing
8. Android Testing
9. Application Programming Interface-API Testing
10. Application Resiliency Testing
11. Automation Testing
12. Availability Testing
13. Back to Back Testing
14. Backend Testing
15. Backward Compatibility Testing
16. Banking Application Testing
17. Benchmark Testing
18. Beta Testing
19. Big Bang Integration Testing
20. Big Data Testing
21. Black Box Testing
22. Bottom-Up Approach
23. Boundary Value Analysis
24. Breadth Testing
25. Build Verification Test
26. Business Intelligence Testing
27. Business Process Testing
28. Cause and Effect Graph Testing
29. Checklist Based Testing
30. Cloud Testing
31. Code Based Testing
32. Code Free Testing
33. Combinatorial Testing
34. Comparison Testing
35. Compatibility Testing
36. Computer Aided Software Testing
37. Concurrent Testing
38. Configuration Testing
39. Confirmation Testing
40. Conformance Testing
41. Content Testing
42. Context-driven Testing
43. Continuous Testing
44. Cookie Testing
45. Cross Browser Testing
46. Cross-Platform Testing
47. Crowdsourced Testing
48. CRUD Testing
49. Data & Database Integrity Testing
50. Data-Driven Testing
51. Data Flow Testing
52. Data Migration Testing
53. Data Warehouse Testing
54. Destructive Testing
55. Development Testing
56. Documentation Testing
57. Durability Testing
58. Dynamic Testing
59. Ecommerce Testing
60. Efficiency Testing
61. End to End Testing
62. Endurance Testing
63. Equivalence Class Testing
64. ERP Testing
65. Exhaustive Testing
66. Experience-Based Testing
67. Exploratory Testing
68. Failover Testing
69. Feature Testing
70. Forced Error Testing

71. Functional Testing
72. Fuzz Testing
73. Game Testing
74. Gamma Testing
75. Globalization Testing
76. Gorilla Testing
77. Gray Box Testing
78. GUI Testing
79. Independent Testing
80. Installation Testing
81. Integration Testing
82. Interface Testing
83. Interoperability Testing
84. Interrupt Testing
85. Isolation Testing
86. Keyword-Driven Testing
87. Load Testing
88. Localization Testing
89. Loop Testing
90. Maintainability Testing
91. Maintenance Testing
92. Manual Testing
93. Mobile Testing
94. Model-Based Testing
95. Module Testing
96. Monkey Testing
97. Multivariate Testing
98. Mutation Testing
99. Negative Testing
100. Non-Functional Testing
101. Operational Testing
102. Orthogonal Array Testing
103. Pair Testing
104. Parallel Testing
105. Path Testing
106. Payment Gateway Testing
107. Penetration Testing
108. Pilot Testing
109. Portability Testing
110. Positive Testing
111. Progressive Testing
112. Protocol Testing
113. Rapid Testing
114. Real-Time Testing
115. Recovery Testing
116. Regression Testing
117. Reliability Testing
118. Requirements Testing
119. Risk-Based Testing
120. Sandwich Testing
121. Sanity Testing
122. Scalability Testing
123. Scenario Testing
124. Scrum Testing
125. Session-Based Testing
126. Smoke Testing
127. Spike Testing
128. Stability Testing
129. State Transition Testing
130. Static Testing
131. Storage Testing
132. Stress Testing
133. System Integration Testing
134. System Testing
135. Thread Testing
136. Transaction Testing
137. Unit Testing
138. Usability Testing.
139. Use Case Testing
140. User Acceptance Testing
141. Visual Testing

Major types of software testing explained

As you can see, there are more types of software testing than we could possibly talk about in greater detail in this article. However, you don’t actually need to know what each and every type of software testing is all about to have a good understanding of software testing in general. You just need to familiarize yourself with the major ones.

Manual vs. automation testing

Software testing can be extremely time-consuming and repetitive, involving countless checks to see if all essential features of a software application work as intended. To make their lives just a bit easier, software testers often write test scripts to automate test execution using various automation testing tools, including Selenium, Visual Studio Test Professional, Telerik Test Studio, SoapUI, and Katalon Studio, just to name a few.

Automated software testing takes significantly less time than manual tests, and it’s also more reliable because there is no testing fatigue to worry about. They are, however, more expensive to prepare than manual tests, which is why they are not as cost-effective for small volume testing as manual tests.

Some types of software testing are easier to automate than others, including unit tests, which deal with the individual components of the software, and integration tests, which combine individual components and test them as a group. Usability testing, on the other hand, needs to be performed manually because machines are currently incapable of evaluating the ease of use and learnability of software applications.

Static vs. dynamic testing

Static testing involves techniques such as inspection, walkthrough, technical review, and informal review to improve the quality of software products by finding errors in the early stages of the development cycle without actually executing any code. That’s why static testing is sometimes also called non-execution testing or verification.

Dynamic testing, on the other hand, involves code execution and techniques such as unit testing, integration testing, and system testing, the last of which is performed on the whole system. Dynamic testing is also known as execution testing or validation.

Whereas static testing is all about preventing problems, dynamic testing is about finding and fixing them. Because the return on investment of dynamic testing is not great, it’s important to spend enough time on static testing.

White box vs. black box vs. grey box testing

Static testing is a great example of white box testing, also known as clear box testing, which is a type of software testing that’s performed with access to all source code and documentation. White box testing can be quick and effective, but it has its limitations because it can’t reveal flaws that are based on configuration problems.

That’s why it’s often performed alongside black box testing, in which software testers don’t have any knowledge of the architecture and no access to the source code. The best example of black box testing is security testing performed by an independent security professional.

If the hired security professional had access to some documentation, we would talk about grey box testing, which is a type of testing that involves at least some knowledge of the internals of a system.

Functional vs. non-functional testing

Black box testing is a great example of a type of software testing that concentrates on the functionality of a system, which is why it’s also known as functional testing. Other examples of functional testing include interface testing, regression testing, and user acceptance testing, and what they all have in common is that they verify that each function of the software application in conformance with the requirement specification.

Non-functional testing checks non-functional aspects such as performance, usability, and reliability and evaluates them based on their quality. Examples of non-functional testing include documentation testing, installation testing, performance testing, and reliability testing.

Conclusion

The importance of software testing can be easily underestimated, but skipping this critical process is never a good idea because it’s almost guaranteed to affect the end product negatively. In this article, we’ve listed well over 100 different types of software testing and explained the major ones to help you understand that software testing is not an afterthought but an integral part of the software development process.