In today’s competitive world, it is essential that the software products delivered to the clients reflect true value for the amount they contract to use the product. Therefore, testing assures the quality and reliability of the software product. Compatibility testing is one of the good choices to assure the reliability of the application or software product. It is a type of software testing to evaluate the application’s compatibility within different environments. It checks whether your software or application is capable of running on different hardware, operating systems, browser, software, network environments or mobile devices. Compatibility Testing is a type of the Non-functional testing.

Need for Compatibility Testing

First of all compatibility testing is performed to ensure a competitive advantage in terms of quality, compatibility, and delivery for the end product. It helps to ensure complete customer satisfaction as it checks whether the application performs as expected across multiple platforms. This type of testing detects errors before the product is delivered to the end user. As we know that stable or quality product is the only key to success for a company. Other than this, quality product increases the sales and also improves the reputation of the company. This testing confirms that the product meets all the requirements agreed upon the end user.

Types of Compatibility Testing

Basically, there are two types of testing: Forward and Backward compatibility testing.

Backward compatibility Testing

It verifies the behavior of the developed software or application with the older versions of the software or application. It also checks whether the application designed using the latest version of an environment also works seamlessly in an older version.

Forward Compatibility Testing: It verifies the behavior of the developed software or application with the newer or upcoming versions of the software or application.

Process of Compatibility Testing

The first phase of testing is to define the set of platforms or environments. Along with this, the tester must have enough knowledge about the various platforms on which the application is expected to work and its configurations. After this test must set the test environment then report the issues, Fix the issues, re-test to confirm issue fixing. It can be performed either through some automation tools or it can be conducted manually.

In conclusion, I want to say “Don’t test your Luck test your application” and run compatibility testing on the product before its release. Most companies today are taking the advantage of getting their testing outsource. As they need not maintain a wide range of hardware and software that is used in the process of testing. So that’s all about Compatibility Testing and thanks for reading 🙂