What is Breadth Testing?

Breadth testing is used to test whether all the promised functionalities of a product are covered without going into the details of each functionality. In the initial stages of the software development cycle, all functionalities can only be implemented partially. Breadth testing can be used to cross-check if the scope of the product is covered in its entirety.

The illustration below shows breadth testing used for a hospital management system:

Breadth testing will test whether all the functionalities have been incorporated in the product or not.

Breadth testing does not test the details of each functionality.

Uses of breadth testing

Breadth testing is mainly used to validate that all functional requirements set by the user are satisfied. It is used in the following testing scenarios:

• Sanity Testing: This is surface-level testing performed when there is not enough time to carry out detailed testing.

• Functional Testing: This is a Quality Assurance (QA) test performed to test all the features of the software product.

• Automated Testing: Carrying out automated tests using predefined test cases.

Breadth testing is used simultaneously with depth testing.

Depth testing is used to test the detailed working of each functionality of a software product. In-depth testing, each functionality is tested exhaustively, and all defects are logged as well. The defect can be either from functional or non-functional requirements.