Quality Assurance: Build a Reliable Product with Specialists

During automated testing, the code runs through a dedicated program, which is way faster and cost-effective than manual testing. It works particularly well in large projects with areas requiring testing for several times. Thanks to automation, it’s possible to maintain high test coverage in the whole project. Using tools such as SonarCloud, we can run automatic analysis looking for bugs or vulnerabilities throughout code repositories and pull requests.

To ensure positive user experience and optimal click-through rates, applications need to run flawlessly on different hardware, operating systems, network environments, and mobile devices. Compatibility testing involves interacting with the application in numerous real environments (e.g. internet browsers, system versions, network speeds, etc.). At Code & Pepper, our go-to compatibility testing tools include BrowserStack and Selenium.

Functional testing is focused on compliance with the application’s functional requirements, in other words — the outcome of system usage. This way, testers are able to find out whether a particular feature delivers the expected result. Our tools and strategies for functional testing include: BDD (Behaviour Driven Development), end-to-end testing, Gherkin language, Cucumber and Specflow libraries, Puppeteer, Protractor, Selenium, Postman, and more.

All elements of an application require testing, including user experience. With usability tests, it is possible to check how real users interact with the software and what are their impressions. Methods used in such tests can be qualitative (observational) or quantitative (based on data and metrics). Usability testing is often carried out before the release to check whether the product meets all expectations in terms of ease of use, navigation flow or time needed to perform an action.

Software needs to be tested not only in regular operation, but also in abnormal conditions, which is the focus of stress testing. By simulating system overload, testers determine its error handling, robustness, and reliability. One of the tools used by Code & Pepper is Artillery, which proved invaluable while developing the Pluto application. Stress testing is a type of a broader field called performance testing, which consists of evaluating the efficiency of the system and its components.

Errors in the visual layers of the app might be particularly disturbing and frustrating for end users and can significantly disrupt their experience. User interface testing usually refers to analysing the graphical user interface (GUI) in search for any inconsistencies in the way the visual elements (e.g. colours, toolbars, images) display during user interactions. Such tests are conducted manually or automatically using specific models or capturing/recording tools.

This type of testing focuses on units, the smallest testable parts of any application. Unit testing is usually performed by developers as it can be applied during the coding stage. The crucial element of unit testing is code coverage. Thanks to Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment, we’re able to maintain it at high levels (above 75%). Tools such as xUnit, moq, FakeItEasy, TestServer and InMemory help us deal with unit tests as efficiently as possible.