Behavioral Testing

For this week’s blog post, I chose the article “Behavior Testing | What it is, Why & How to Automate?” from testsigma.com. I selected this article because it fits within the Behavioral testing section in the course topics section of the syllabus. This article goes into great detail about behavioral testing, from discussing what it is to explain how AI could be used in its implementation. For this blog post, however, I will discuss the sections on what behavioral testing is and a couple of methods that can be used to catch errors with behavioral testing.

The article describes behavioral testing as a form of functional testing designed to test the external functionality of a system. “Behavior testing or behavioral testing is a type of testing that focuses on testing the external behavior of a software application. It is a type of functional testing. It helps ensure that software systems meet the expectations and requirements of end-users, making it a valuable part of the software development and testing process. Behavior testing is also known as black-box testing.” As described by the article, behavioral testing is essential to ensure that the systems or products you are designing work well enough so your customers can use them efficiently. There are many different methods when using behavioral testing to find errors, such as equivalence partitioning.

According to the article, one method that can be used with behavioral testing that is good at finding errors is Equivalence Partitioning. “The equivalence partitioning testing technique involves dividing the input data into different classes or partitions, such as valid and invalid data, assuming the system will behave the same for both inputs. Example – For a login form, if the password requires at least eight characters, you might test one case with a 6-character password (invalid) and another with a 10-character password (valid).” When using equivalence partitioning, because you are dividing inputs into separate groups, in a way, you can do two things at once. One is that the system functions as it should with valid inputs, and the other can catch invalid inputs. Another way behavioral testing can be implemented is through boundary value analysis.

According to the article, boundary value analysis is a form of behavioral testing focusing on the possible range of inputs, specifically numerical inputs. “It focuses on testing the boundaries of input ranges, as errors often occur at the edges of these ranges. Test cases are designed for values at the lower and upper boundaries and just above and below. Example – If an input field accepts values from 1 to 100, the test data can be 0, 1, 2, 99, 100, and 101.” This kind of testing can be very helpful in making sure that you have accounted for the possible range of inputs that a user may enter, both valid and invalid.

Article: https://testsigma.com/guides/behavior-testing/