Test Design

Exploratory testing is an approach to testing that emphasizes the freedom and responsibility of testers to continually optimize the value of their work. Exploratory testing is the process of three mutually supportive activities—learning, test design, and test execution—done in parallel. With skill and practice, exploratory testers typically uncover an order of magnitude more problems than when the same amount of effort is spent on procedurally-scripted testing. All testers conduct exploratory testing in one way or another, but few know how to do it systematically to obtain the greatest benefits. Even fewer can articulate the process. Paul Holland shares specific heuristics and techniques of exploratory testing that will help you get the most from this highly productive approach. Paul focuses on the skills and dynamics of exploratory testing, and how it can be combined with scripted approaches.

You have just been assigned to a new testing project. So, where do you start? How do you develop a plan and begin testing? How will you report on your progress? In this hands-on session, Paul Holland shares test project approaches based on the Heuristic Software Test Model from Rapid Software Testing. Learn and practice new ways to plan, execute, and report on testing activities. You’ll be given a product to test and start by creating three raw lists—Product Coverage Outline, Potential Risks, and Test Ideas—that help ensure comprehensive testing. Use these lists to create an initial set of test charters. Employing “advanced” test management tools—Excel and whiteboards with Sticky Notes—you’ll create clear and concise test reports without using “bad metrics” (counts of pass/fail test cases, percent of test cases executed vs. plan). Look forward to your next testing project—or improve your current one—with new ideas and your new-and-improved planning, testing, and reporting skills.

Whether you are new to testing or looking for a better way to organize your test practices, understanding risk is essential to successful testing. Dale Perry describes a general risk-based framework—applicable to any development lifecycle model—to help you make critical testing decisions earlier and with more confidence. Learn how to focus your testing effort, what elements to test, and how to organize test designs and documentation. Review the fundamentals of risk identification, analysis, and the role testing plays in risk mitigation. Develop an inventory of test objectives to help prioritize your testing and translate objectives into a concrete strategy for creating tests. Focus your tests on the areas essential to your stakeholders. Execution and assessing test results provide a better understanding of both the effectiveness of your testing and the potential for failure in your software. Take back a proven approach to organize your testing efforts and new ways to add more value to your project and organization.

As testers, we know that we can define many more test cases than we will ever have time to design, execute, and report. The key problem in testing is choosing a small, “smart” subset—from the almost infinite number of tests available—that will find a large percentage of the defects. Join Lee Copeland to discover how to design test cases using formal black-box techniques, including equivalence class testing, boundary value testing, decision tables, and state-transition diagrams. Explore examples of each of these techniques in action. Don’t just pick test cases randomly. Instead, learn to selectively choose a set of test cases that maximizes your effectiveness and efficiency to find more defects in less time. Then, learn how to use the test results to evaluate the quality of both your products and your testing. Discover the test design techniques that will make your testing more productive.

When automated tests are cumbersome to maintain, we often view this as a technical problem. However, an often-overlooked factor is the role that testers play in making automation scalable and maintainable. Test design can help or hurt how automation engineers can implement tests efficiently. If tests are too detailed or lack focus, good automation becomes virtually impossible. In this tutorial—for both testers and automation engineers—Hans Buwalda addresses what it means for test design when tests are to be automated. See why successful automated testing is not so much a technical challenge as it is a test design challenge. Hans shares a template that you can follow to get your tests organized and ready for efficient automation. Whether you work on a traditional or agile project, join Hans to learn how techniques including action-based testing, behavior-driven development, and exploratory testing will help you achieve better test design and great automation results.