Why Is Unit Testing Important In Quality Assurance (QA)?

Developers should unit test their own code when possible, However, on many projects these tests go undocumented and sometimes lack a methodical approach. In other words, without a list or some other document to work from, it becomes increasingly difficult for a developer to track testing progress as the size of an application increases. Thus, a test plan guides this effort and contains a list of units to be tested along with the suggested approach for executing these tests.

In addition to creating a test plan, the Quality assurance team can write unit test conditions to effectively construct a format from which unit test results will be obtained. Quality assurance members often allocate these test scripts to the development team for execution in the development environment.

This approach works well for time critical projects and/or projects with geographically dispersed members. However, test conditions created by a Qa team should not be substituted for routine unit testing. Instead, Qa efforts are used to compliment routine unit tests.
'Routine unit testing' includes identifying all fields and testing for input, output, upper and lower boundaries, as well as calculations when appropriate. All standard Graphical user interface (GUI) elements should be identified and validated. These include scroll bars, push buttons, links, etc.

It is vital to ensure that each unit of the application will be tested and documented before inclusion in the next build.
Software development projects often contain a mix of developer experience levels. Using a third party to create unit test conditions and scripts adds team structure, which in turn reduces risks associated with software development.

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