| Alternative Ways of Software Testing |
| Monday, November 27, 2006 |
If there is absolutely no time for you to document your system, do consider these other approaches of testing
User/Acceptance TestingUser Testing is used to identify issues with user acceptability of the system. The most trivial to the most complicated defects can be reported here. It is also possibly the best way to determine how well people interact with the system. Resources used are minimal and potentially requires no prior functional or system knowledge. In fact the more unknown a user is to the system, the more preferred he is for user testing. A regressive form of user testing can help uncover some defects in the high-risk areas.
Random / Exploratory TestingRandom Testing has no rules. The tester is free to do what he pleases and as he seems fit. The system will benefit however, if the tester is functionally aware of the domain and has a basic understanding of business requirements. It will prevent reporting of unnecessary defects. A variation of random testing, called as Monte Carlo simulation, which is described as generation of values for uncertain variables over and over to simulate a model can also be used. This can be used for systems, which have large variation in input data of the numbers or data kind.
Customer StoriesUser/Customer stories can be defined as simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality that will be valuable to real users. Small stories are written about the desired function. The team writing the stories will include customer, project manager, developer and the tester. Concise stories are hand written on small cards such that the stories are small and testable. Once a start is made available to the tester, available functional and system knowledge can help speed up the process of testing and further test case development. |
Posted @ Monday, November 27, 2006   |
|
| 2 Comments: |
-
Exploratory testing has nothing to do with random testing.
Exploratory testing means doing learning, test design, and test execution in parallel. There *are* rules to exploratory testing-- the same rules that apply to any other kind of testing: cover the product well, find important problems fast, explain your work, etc.
Whoever told you what exploratory testing is did not know anything about it.
-- james
-
Hi James, nice to see your comment. I do understand that random and exploratory testing are not the same. Exploratory testing follows a planned approach where as random testing is done on some randomly picked functionalities. That's why random testing is also referred as Monkey or Gorilla Testing. Correct me if I am wrong !
Coming back to my blog post, I used random and exploratory and random testing as synonyms because, there are still lot of people who considers both of them as a single type of alternate testing.
Are you really James Bach, the famous software tester? If so, I am really privileged to have your comment on my blog. I am a die hard fan of you and a regular reader of your blog. Also I have included your blog in the all time best testing blog list in my blogs. Please keep reading my blogs and correct me when ever I am wrong. Once again Thanks for your Comment.
|
| |
| << Home |
| |
|
Back to Top |
| Bookmark This Site |
|
|
|
Exploratory testing has nothing to do with random testing.
Exploratory testing means doing learning, test design, and test execution in parallel. There *are* rules to exploratory testing-- the same rules that apply to any other kind of testing: cover the product well, find important problems fast, explain your work, etc.
Whoever told you what exploratory testing is did not know anything about it.
-- james