Overview
Focuses on verifying that the application’s features work correctly from the end user’s perspective
- The broadest scope in the diagram
- Typically, functional tests are performed by the developers who built the application, but often they are handled by specialized QA teams or external QA vendors.
- Frontend developers may also run light functional tests to ensure the server-side application behaves properly.
- Because functional tests involve many components—such asAPI calls, HTTP communication, and database connections—they are not considered unit tests. (Although not shown in the diagram, these tests may also involve external services, adding further complexity.)