TL;DR

This post demystifies definition of implementation level testing given byBlack Box Software Testing Foundations course (BBST) created by Rebecca Fiedler, Cem Kaner and James Bach.

Definition

Implementation level testing is testing focused on the details of the implementation.

If we ask following two questions:

• does program works as programmer intended?

• could program be optimized in some way?

then we do implementation level testing.

Example

We usually use glass box testing approach with implementation level testing.

Typical examples of implementation level testing are:

• unit testing

• integration testing

• data flow testing

• performance testing of unit or several units (module)

Conclusion

It is important to state that programmer intention how program should work could be miss-aligned with program objective. This is why we have system level testing that asks question:

• does program meets it’s objectives.