Operational Testing

Definition - What does Operational Testing mean?

Operational testing refers to the evaluation of a software application prior to the production phase. Operational testing ensures system and component compliance in the application's standard operating environment (SOE).

Operational testing is applied in a specified environment during various software development life cycle (SDLC) phases for the evaluation of software syetem functionality.

Techopedia explains Operational Testing

Over time, software system requirements change. Introducing change to a highly complex software system often results in problematic system functionality verification.

Operational testing focuses on system implementation behavior and is preferred over verification for the following reasons:

Operational testing facilitates the consideration of environmental factors that influence system behavior.
Operational testing allows feature interaction.

A key operational testing feature is error detection, which ensures correct functional implementation.

Test cases are derived from a system specified test generation algorithm (TGA).