Feature Testing - A Detailed Guide

In the era of advancement, companies and businesses keep on changing their system, software, and technology to stay ahead in the competition of digitalization. Consequently, adding new features to their services and products helps to enhance their growth and quality. All these steps ultimately generate more demand for their products and more revenue.

Have you ever wondered why Apple has become the world's most famous tech company with its products? Apple releases a new iPhone version every year with new appealing features anticipated by the world anxiously. Thus, people become more interested in their products, which drives them to buy them. Consequently, Apple can upsurge its selling and production power with enormous revenue by executing a few advanced features into its products.

Features consequently play a vital part in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). New features mainly set apart a product and make it unique from other comparable products in the market. Even though software developers design viable and appealing features, defined as the progressions that add new functionality or change current features. The developers usually use testing methods like Feature Testing, which guarantees that the client and end client get bug-free products. In this article, we will discuss Feature Testing and its importance in detail.

What is Feature Testing?

Feature Testing is the method involved in making changes in a software system to update at least one or more new features or make some modifications to the current version of the software. These features are known to have unique characteristics intended to be helpful, intuitive, and effective. Therefore, even though testing these features within each development stage is essential, they should be tried thoroughly.

The point of feature testing is to ensure that the product works appropriately to meet all the planned goals and specifications. On the off chance that any product or application can't work according to the client's requirement or execute the picked capacities with exactness, it might prompt a massive loss of money and effort. Perhaps, organizations use numerous software. Thus, the breakdown of any particular program might result in an obstacle to the functioning of other software too.

To remove any existing issue in the software's functionality, it is necessary to do feature testing. The new features and improvements sometimes come with specific bugs and issues, therefore, features testing tracks those issues and selects the best one to continue with.

How does Feature Testing Work?

Feature tests are like A/B/n tests that permit you to control whether, for every variation, the related feature is on or off through feature flags, also known as feature toggles. Likewise, it empowers you to manage the feature variable values for the various parts related to the feature.

Whenever visitors reach your site or application, the feature gathers metrics connected with their engagement with the features. Likewise, you can look into measurements on the analytics dashboard to decide if the feature prompts positive or negative conduct. Simultaneously, you can again figure out what feature setup is the most effective.

Practices to Follow for Feature Testing

Before starting with the feature testing, it is essential for the developer team to aim toward the current application and how the new feature finds a place with the existing features. Although, each feature ought to have a characterized unique function, and the team should record the business necessities related to it.

Moreover, the developer team ought to likewise comprehend how the current features will impact the working of the new features. According to a design perspective, every new and unique feature in the application should work in tandem, firmly running together.

Below are the key steps to doing feature testing effectively-

• Understanding the feature

In the initial step, the developer team should lay out the fundamental elements of the new feature, the reason for adding it, and the prerequisites and details the feature needs to meet. By doing so, the team will be assisted by the data to test the feature effectively.

• Making the different test situations

After that, it would be ideal for the developer to make different test situations to cover all the conceivable experiments. This progression guarantees that all features are tested to detect bugs or imperfections.

• Assemble data on positive and negative cases

Before starting the test, the QA should outline every information case on positive and negative and limit cases to follow errors and bugs in the new feature. By doing so, analyzers can easily play with every positive and negative software that a client could experience and check whether everything is working appropriately.

1. Information about feature execution

The next step for the team is to attempt to acquire clarity in every one of the areas associated with the feature execution. This would incorporate all the backend changes made to execute the feature. Therefore, it will permit the analyzers to detect an error quickly and make changes if required.

• Test the form in the beginning phases

Developers should start testing the features during the beginning phases of the improvement cycle. It will guarantee any overall issues that may be experienced after the feature is developed. This will permit developers to settle for the imperfections early and adjust the feature to the client's requests.

Why Should You Do Feature Testing?

Before launching the new features you have developed, it is essential to test them to decide the effect on the clients and application. Therefore, it is essential to perform feature testing to effectively understand the impact of your new features on user experience.

Therefore, mobile application testing will assist you with understanding the business effect of this new feature and what enhancements ought to be made before release.

Testing of New Feature

Before releasing a new feature, it must be tried with real-world experiments. As thousands of users will use the feature, it turns out to be harder to deliver an application with zero error, as each individual is unique in relation to another.

Below are a few essential steps to testing new features for mobile applications.

• Field Testing

Field testing becomes a significant part of testing the new feature and its effect in real-world situations. This test will be done by QA analyzers where they would involve this integrated feature according to the need in reality.

In any case, field testing turns into somewhat challenging to complete as it requires countless dedicated testers to execute field testing actually and easily. Likewise, field testing would require various devices and support, which further increases the expense of testing.

However, this test might cost more. Nevertheless, it will give superb results of your new feature and its acknowledgment in reality.

• Leverage Your Community

Real-world testing to leverage the community is another choice to test your new feature. To test the newly developed features, it would be an ideal approach to source alpha and beta testers in the versatile application. With the assistance of alpha and beta analyzers, you will get suitable input from real clients who will utilize your new application feature in a true situation.

While obtaining alpha and beta analyzers, testers might face some risks, but it gives an excellent strategy for presenting bugs to them. As a result, it turns into a dependable strategy that can be assembled in important feedback from real users and provide you genuinely improved access to your versatile application.

• Incorporating your application

You can likewise join your coordinated application into your colleagues' daily activities and work processes for a more proficient field testing of new features. This will assist you with experiencing bugs and issues in your new part typically by your community of users.

Not just it saves some expense for obtaining alpha and beta testers for the test. Yet, it will expand the productivity to detect any issue without wasting any time and further develop it at the earliest opportunity. Likewise, you can utilize this way to reveal details, including battery use, device compatibility, and other ecological elements.

• Crowdsourced testing

This type of test will uncover your application's advantages, effectiveness, and ability with new features. Before dealing with the Scaling UX and exploratory tests, it is essential for the testers to have enough opportunity to dedicate themselves to these significant testing approaches.

Therefore, your team would have to utilize automatic tools and services to let the free time team use other testing approaches. Even so, automatic tools will empower them to dispose of testing applications in a tedious cycle.

• A/B Testing

A/B testing is an ideal way to test and get the best feature details. This testing for new features would empower you to see which variants perform better. This test will compare the current version A app and the new feature version B app and check which one performs better.

While directing A/B testing, you want to aim toward key perspectives, for example, client onboarding, user engagement rate, or user retention.

Benefits of Feature Testing

Now you have a clear vision about feature testing, how it works, the correct method to do it, and why a business needs it. It must have helped you follow up the same to test any new feature you are working on. Along with that, understanding the benefits of feature testing would also encourage you to adopt this testing method for better growth.

• Validate feature fit 

Feature tests permit you to gather measurements and approve if the feature is a solid match and fulfills your business objectives.

With the feature test, you can empower the feature for a specific portion of the traffic and limit it to others. This way, you can easily examine the metrics of performance of a new feature when the feature is on, and can also check when it is off. Consequently validating if the feature will be good to roll out for everybody to utilize.

• Decide the best feature design

Apart from enabling or disabling your feature at the variety level, one can likewise run a feature test to probe various arrangements and test situations for the feature. That way, it will be feasible to decide on the best feature experience.

• Find bugs

Normal standard software testing methods like unit testing and practical testing don't usually help to find the bugs. Whereas, feature testing is an excellent method of testing to find any bugs. By enclosing new features by feature flag, you can rapidly roll back bugs without a code conveyance.

• Iterate to Perfection 

If you seek to create features for the long term, you can run feature tests on them repeatedly and decide the best design for them over their lifetime, thereby prompting the ideal experience.

• Feature tests and nonstop delivery

Bringing new feature tests into your feature delivery system permits you to rapidly approve ideas, check out metrics and decide whether the feature is fit to be carried out to everybody, all without expecting you to do another code deployment. Likewise, you can change different parts of the feature by trying other things with various configurations.

Whenever you are finished gathering metrics and satisfied with the results, you can release the feature progressively to everybody again without deploying code.

Conclusion

To conclude, with digitalization, the interest in software and applications with particular and new features is expanding quickly. Businesses are more in favor of selling products that have unique features as they draw customers' attention. To satisfy this growing need, developers are planning helpful, powerful, and appealing software features. Additionally, by performing feature testing, they guarantee that the software is working extraordinarily and that no bugs are identified during its execution.

Feature Tests permit testers to follow the application's progress as it tests features of an application in various phases of software improvement. In particular, feature testing assists them with making software based on clients' needs which further forms a reliable connection between them. Subsequently, feature testing is ideal for developers who need to plan software of recommendable quality.