What is the Purpose of Negative Testing?

by Nataliia Vasylyna | December 24, 2014 10:00 am

Though testers are considered to be people with negative and critical mindset, web site testing, desktop testing and mobile testing are mostly based on positive test cases. Negative testing is often avoided during software testing because it is incorrectly understood by many people.

All software documents are written in a positive manner, negative situations are never considered there.

No Negative Cases and User Behavior is Mentioned in a Software Product:

• specification requirements;
• analysis deliverables documents;
• description of business processes;
• user manuals.

All the documentation informs what the software can do and how to use it, and not a word is about what it doesn’t do and what one shouldn’t do with it.

Some managers and testers wrongly believe that negative testing is carried out in order to prove that the application is non-operational. In reality its aim is to verify how the system manages unpredicted and extraordinary user behavior and inputs.

During negative testing test engineers check how the software reacts on inputting invalid data, interrupting data processing and so on.

Experts in manual and automated testing claim that up to a quarter of all the test cases should be negative. Then functional testing[1], installation testing[2], cross-browser testing and other testing types will be more efficient, and the risk of appearance of errors after release will considerably diminish.

Related Posts:

• Positive And Negative Testing[3]
• Negative Test Cases for Functional Testing[4]
• Software Testing Techniques : Positive vs Negative[5]

Source URL: https://blog.qatestlab.com/2014/12/24/what-is-the-purpose-of-negative-testing/

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