Your guarantee that all separate parts of the software—components, features, subsystems, and so on—will work flawlessly together in real-world scenarios.
Get a consultationOur specialists become full-fledged members of the clients’ teams soon after they join the projects. Each QA expert is as dedicated to your goals as you are. Our average retention on the QA software testing project is 3.5 years. Many clients have been working with our dedicated QA experts far more than that, and many choose to return with their new projects.
Integration testing in software examines how different parts of your digital solution work together as a unified system. When modules are developed separately, problems often emerge at the connection points. That’s why QA engineers need to check how newly developed or switched-in parts of a software system operate with other elements. Technically, integration software testing is a part of functional testing. It aims to verify that the new feature or element behaves as expected and as stated in the requirements. It’s a common practice to automate integration testing for stable projects with repeated checks and large work scopes.
A task of a QA company is to ensure that all components of your software work together flawlessly, regardless of the scenarios and conditions. For this, our team offers a variety of software integration tests and services to provide the optimal coverage. We identify the issues between modules, APIs, databases, and third-party systems before they impact your users and business.
QA Madness covers a full cycle of software testing and quality assurance, with QA engineers looking into the slightest details and exploring all possible facets of testing—in this case, integration testing. We combine different approaches, methods, and testing subtypes so that you can experience integration testing advantages to the fullest, as well as address all potential challenges. Some of the most in-demand types of integration testing include the following.
We verify that your application interacts correctly with databases across all operations. QA engineers check for overall performance and examine transaction handling, data storage, retrieval, and manipulation, and so on.
We check how your applications connect with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other providers. It’s essential to confirm that your systems properly utilize cloud storage, computing resources, and managed services and remain reliable when scaling.
We test interfaces between your new software and legacy systems to assure proper data mapping, end-to-end flows, and performance. We identify compatibility issues and performance bottlenecks to bridge technology gaps.
Our experts check end-to-end payment processing flows using various payment scenarios (refunds, partial payments, currency conversions, invalid credentials, etc.) to guarantee that your system responds appropriately and is secure.
For apps depending on external services, we test all such connections—validate request formats, authentication mechanisms, response handling, etc., paying attention to all API aspects, from version compatibility to error recovery and beyond.
For business infrastructure, we examine the connections between ERP, CRM, HR, and other enterprise applications. QA engineers verify data flows and compatibility to make sure that business processes remain consistent.
The importance of integration testing shouldn’t be underestimated, as it delivers significant value beyond what testing individual components can provide. By examining how components interact within your system, we help you achieve a number of advantages for end-users, your team, and your overall business.
Quality Assurance Setup and Testing for Mobile Gaming & NFT Platform
The client was looking for a QA engineer with experience in mobile testing and knowledge of the gaming industry. They had a new and custom platform and needed to set up the QA process from scratch: define the coverage, prepare documentation, and integrate testing into the workflow.
QA Process Setup and Testing for the Meeting Platform
The product was live, but the QA process was chaotic – without a clear flow or software testing specialists involved. The client sought an external audit and process setup so that other team members wouldn’t have to test the platform and severe defects wouldn’t slip to production.
Quick QA Team Scaling for Supply Chain Software Company
The company needed to expand its QA department rapidly during hypergrowth. They had high standards regarding the candidate requirements and an extensive list of responsibilities for the new team members. The main challenge was getting the right expertise while scaling quickly and smoothly.
Full-time QA Support for the Marketing Platform Provider
The QA team joined a few months into the development. The platform was new and developed from scratch. Thus, it required thorough analysis at all test levels and vast coverage. The team worked under frequently changing requirements and needed to adjust the testing strategy accordingly.
Testing Process Setup for the Cancer Research Software
The client develops innovative desktop software products in the healthcare domain. The QA engineers tested two of their projects – software that operates the laboratory devices. The company needed vast test coverage and consistent documentation standardized by their rules.
Testing of the Cloud-Based E-Commerce Solution
The company created a shipping storefront solution – a custom product that hasn’t been tested yet. The scope of tasks for QA engineers, in addition to running tests, included close analysis and the creation of a detailed functional checklist that would suit the first and subsequent test iteration.
QA Madness helps tech companies strengthen their in-house teams by staffing dedicated manual and automated testing experts.
Connecting software components properly requires a structured approach. So does testing these components when they are assembled into a single, often complex, digital system. Over the years, we’ve developed an effective algorithm to manage this type of testing and quickly adjust it to a client’s project. The standard integration testing process follows five key stages.
Setting the foundation for effective integration testing.
Our QA engineers begin by getting closely familiar with your software. They study designs and requirements and interact with the product to understand the system architecture, component dependencies, and integration points. They map data flows to understand how information moves between components and where issues might occur.
The specialists identify critical interfaces between modules, databases, APIs, and third-party services to include in test coverage and prioritize appropriately. We determine which integration methods best suit your project—whether that’s top-down, bottom-up, or incremental approaches.
The team assesses integration risks and establishes clear priorities. QA engineers also specify what integration test tools they are going to use. Integration test planning concludes with a comprehensive integration test strategy document that outlines the scope, approach, resources, and schedule.
Creating test scenarios that target integration points.
We develop extensive checklists and/or detailed test cases focusing on component interfaces and data exchanges. QA engineers create various scenarios to verify correct communication between modules, proper data handoffs, appropriate error handling at integration boundaries, and so on. These test cases examine happy paths, negative scenarios, and edge cases where systems interact.
During this stage, QA specialists also prepare test data and help set up testing environments. It’s essential to mirror your production configuration to get accurate results. The goal is to create conditions where integration points can be thoroughly verified, or problems can be revealed and reported.
Executing tests to verify system integration.
QA engineers get to the practical part. They follow the checklists and/or execute the pre-written test cases to apply each software integration test and see how the components of your system interact. They can examine all end-to-end flows or focus on business-critical functionality—it all depends on your request and expectations.
QA engineers document integration failures if any are encountered. They identify precisely where and how communication breaks down between components. Each defect is summarized in a detailed report featuring a review of the issues, configuration details, steps to reproduce, visual materials, etc.
Ensuring fixes work without creating new problems.
After your development team addresses initial integration issues, QA engineers retest the fixes to confirm that the defects aren’t reproducible anymore. They also perform regression testing to verify that fixes don’t disrupt previously working connections.
This stage is essential because any code changes can destabilize the system—reverse the previous progress, introduce new problems, or re-introduce the fixed defects. The scope for regression testing is determined in a separate clause of the strategy.
Providing actionable insights from integration testing.
You receive comprehensive documentation of all integration test results. QA engineers provide detailed reports highlighting both successful integrations and any remaining issues, with clear recommendations for addressing them.
We often share additional recommendations that don’t relate to issues directly but can improve product quality. These insights help you build more robust, maintainable systems with cleaner integration patterns.
If you decide to hire a QA engineer to work full-time or an entire dedicated QA team, the integration testing cycle will start all over with the new sprint—with updated documentation and a new software build.
Finding and fixing integration issues requires specialized expertise and focused attention. By partnering with our team for QA integration testing, you gain access to integration testing professionals who understand the complex interactions between software components. Our team brings a fresh perspective to your integration challenges, spotting potential issues you might otherwise overlook.
Our team has years of experience with diverse markets, business domains, platform types, technological stacks, and digital products of various complexities. This enables QA engineers to easily adapt to your request and processes.
Most of our QA experts are Middle and Senior-level specialists with practical experience in several domains and knowledge of best QA practices and tools. You can also hire a general QA engineer, a QA Lead, or an ISTQB-certified expert.
We cover the full spectrum of QA services—for integration testing and beyond. We take a nuanced approach to testing and QA, applying all necessary checks and approaches within a single testing type, and can extend coverage on demand.
You can choose the cooperation model that suits you best—a dedicated QA team, a single full-time QA engineer, or part-time support. All QA engineers undergo onboarding before joining the project and are ready to fully integrate from day one.
In addition to transparent communication and a nuanced understanding of your software, we provide guidance that goes beyond bug reporting. We notice when QA requires scaling, as well as suggest how to improve overall usability and processes.
QA Madness is an ISO-certified company, meaning we aren’t just familiar with secure development and cooperation practices but also have official proof of this. We highly value every client’s confidentiality and intellectual property.
“QA Madness has established a smooth workflow through effective communication. The team is trustworthy, efficient, and hardworking.”
CTO at BRKFST
Jon Lopinot
“Thanks to QA Madness’s efforts, we are able to resolve technical issues and keep our platforms optimized and bug-free.”
CEO at Dexter Agency
Marc Uitterhoeve
“QA Madness was seriously professional. They listened to our needs and gave us the kind of work we expected. As a result of their efforts, we can locate a bug in the test environment, which prevents issues from entering production. I would recommend them, 100%.”
COO at Bitbull Srl
Alessandro Ronchi
They’ve always been very professional, prompt, and available when we needed them. We’ve never had any issues or needed to go back and teach them how to meet our standards.
VP at Isadora Agency
Alex Mathias
QA Madness has significantly reduced the number of bugs and issues in our final products. They’ve also improved our internal processes.
Co-founder of Wezz E-Commerce
Jordi Dekker
QA Madness generated extensive feedback that developers normally can’t see. We could never have gained this insight without their thorough functionality testing services. I appreciated how quickly they conducted testing despite the high volume of work it entails.
CEO at SupportDesk
Wouter Den Otter
They are an extremely valuable part of our extended team, and I couldn’t ask for more from a project management standpoint. QA Madness team is extremely professional when it comes to sticking to estimates, scopes, and quotes.
Co-founder of Above The Fray Design, Inc.
Noah Oken-Berg
We’ve gathered answers to the most common questions about integration testing. These insights will help you understand how this type of testing can improve your software quality and development process. For more specific questions, contact our team. We’ll be glad to discuss how it all can work for your project.
In software testing, integration testing verifies that different components of your application work together correctly. Unit testing that examines isolated pieces of code. Integration testing is the next of the four testing levels, and it focuses on the connections between modules.
QA engineers check how your software components exchange data, process information together, and coordinate their actions. Integration testing reveals issues that only appear when separate parts try to function as a unified system—problems that individual component tests often miss.
Functional testing is an umbrella term embracing a long list of testing types with different focuses. If we refer to functional testing as one of its subtypes that explores software features, it will be on the same hierarchy level as integration testing. In this case, functional testing and integration testing are closely related activities that serve different purposes.
Functional testing verifies that specific features work according to requirements. It checks whether a function does what it’s supposed to do when used as intended. The focus is on user-facing behavior and business requirements.
Integration testing, by contrast, examines how components interact with each other. The purpose of integration testing is to verify that modules communicate correctly, data passes properly between systems, and components work together as expected.
For example, while functional testing might confirm that a shopping cart calculates totals correctly, integration testing ensures the cart properly connects with inventory, payment processing, and order fulfillment systems.
There’s also a mixed approach known as integrated functional testing. It verifies both the functionality of individual features and how they work together across component boundaries within a single test run.
System integration testing examines how your complete application interacts with other systems in its structure. It verifies connections between your software and external components like databases, third-party APIs, payment processors, and other enterprise applications.
QA engineers test these broader interactions to ensure your entire system works correctly within its technical environment. System integration testing typically occurs after component integration testing and before final user acceptance testing, confirming that all systems can communicate properly before release.
Some oppose system integration testing to product integration testing, distinguishing between these two similar and related activities. According to this approach, the difference is in boundaries: product integration testing checks interactions within your product’s boundaries, while system integration testing verifies connections with external tools and platforms.
Integration testing comes in several forms, each with specific advantages. For example, top-down integration testing starts with high-level components and gradually incorporates lower modules. Bottom-up integration testing begins with basic components and builds upward. Big Bang integration tests all components simultaneously, while incremental approaches add one component at a time for easier troubleshooting.
Beyond these integration testing methods, we offer specialized integration testing types, including database integration, API integration, cloud services integration, legacy system integration, ERP integration, and others. Each of them focuses on particular connection points where different technologies meet and must work together seamlessly.
Integration testing for software reveals problems that other testing methods miss. Components that function perfectly in isolation often fail when they need to work together. If not caught early, these integration issues can cause data corruption, functional failures, and poor user experiences.
Good integration testing reduces project risk by identifying interface problems when they’re still inexpensive to fix. It validates your system architecture in practice, not just in theory. It ensures reliable connections with third-party systems your business depends on.
Perhaps most importantly, integration testing builds confidence in your software releases by confirming that your system works as a cohesive whole, not just as separate parts.
The particularities of your product and request define what integration testing process will look like. Nevertheless, there’s a basic structure that can help you understand this process in general.
First, QA engineers identify all integration points in your system—the places where components exchange information or trigger actions. Then, they create test cases specifically targeting these interfaces, focusing on data transfers, API contracts, and cross-component workflows.
For each integration point, QA specialists verify both normal operation and error handling. They test with valid data to confirm proper functionality and with invalid data to ensure appropriate error responses. QA engineers examine timing dependencies between components and ascertain that each part respects the contracts it has with others.
Then, QA engineers might suggest adding test automation. It’s often most effective to combine manual and automated testing. Manual testing helps explore complex integration scenarios and edge cases, while integration test automation provides consistent verification of established integration points. Our team implements the approach that best suits your specific project, adjusting the described flow accordingly.
Ready to speed up the testing process?
