What is system testing, why is it needed and how to do it?

What is system testing?

System testing is a phase of software testing in which a complete and fully integrated software product is tested based on a software specification (SRS: Software Requirement Specification). The main purpose of such testing is an evaluation process that covers aspects related to business, functional specifics and consumer expectations.

This is a type of black box testing performed to evaluate the conformance of an entire system to specified requirements and is entirely based on the user's point of view. This type of testing assumes that there is no need for a deep understanding of the application's internal structure, design, or code.

This testing should be conducted after system integration testing has been completed and the functional and non-functional requirements have been verified.

In integration testing, testers focus on finding errors/defects in the integrated modules. While in system testing, testers focus on finding errors/defects based on the behavior of the software application, the design of the software and the expectations of the end user.

Why is system testing important? Why is system testing so important?

• In software life cycle (SDLC), system testing is performed as the first level of testing.

• This testing phase checks whether the system meets the functional requirements or not.

• System testing verifies the application architecture and business requirements.

• The application/system is tested in an environment similar to the designed production environment.

As a rule, system testing is carried out by a separate team. In addition, system testing is carried out on a staging or cloned instance of a production server, which implies testing the software application in conditions that are as close as possible to the real production environment.

How to perform system testing?

System testing requires the following steps.

1. The first and main step is to prepare a system testing plan.

   Depending on the project plan, test strategy, and master test plan, the system test plan may vary from organization to organization.

   List of standard points to consider when creating a system test plan:

   • Goals and objectives

   • Application area

   • Critical areas

   • Test result

   • Test Strategy for System Testing

   • Test schedule

   • Criteria for starting and ending the testing process

   • Criteria for pausing and resuming system testing

   • Test Environment

   • Roles and Responsibilities

   • Glossary

2. The second step is creating test cases.

   It is in many ways similar to the process of writing functional test cases. When writing test cases, you need to write test scripts and use cases.

   You should consider different types of testing such as…

   • Functional testing

   • Regression testing

   • Smoke testing

   • Sanity testing

   • Ad-hoc testing

   • Exploratory testing

   • Usability testing

   • GUI testing

   • Compatibility testing

   • Performance testing

   • Stress Testing

   • Stress testing

   • Volume testing

   • Testing Error Handling

   • Scalability testing

   • Security testing

   • Capacity testing

   • Testing the installation

   • Recovery testing

   • Reliability testing

   • Accessibility testing, etc.

   When writing test cases, you need to make sure that they cover all functional, non-functional, technical and user requirements.

   Sample test case format:

   

3. Generating test data for system testing.

4. Automated execution of test cases.

5. If you use a test management tool, you can run regular test cases and update them.

6. The next step is error checking and regression testing.

7. Test life cycles can be repeated as needed.