In the last installment, we ended by asking “Once the tester has learned something about the product, how can you focus a tester’s work without over-focusing it? I provided some examples in Part 4 of this series. Here’s another: scenario testing. The examples I’ll provide here are based on work done by James Bach and Geordie Keitt several years ago. (I’ve helped several other organizations apply this approach much more … Read more

In our coaching session (which started here), Frieda was still playing the part of a manager who was fixated on test cases—and doing it very well. She played a typical management card: “What about learning about the product? Aren’t test cases a good way to do that?” In Rapid Software Testing, we say that testing is evaluating a product by learning about it through exploration and experimentation, which includes questioning, … Read more

Note: this post is long from the perspective of the kitten-like attention spans that modern social media tends to encourage. Fear not. Reading it could help you to recognize how you might save you hours, weeks, months of excess and unnecessary work, especially if you’re working as a tester or manager in a regulated environment. Testers frequently face problems associated with excessive emphasis on formal, procedurally scripted testing. Politics, bureaucracy, … Read more

In the previous post, “Frieda”, my coaching client, asked about producing test cases for auditors or regulators. In Rapid Software Testing (RST), we find it helpful to frame that in terms of formal testing. Testing is formal to the degree that it must be done in a specific way, or to verify specific facts. Formal testing typically has the goal of confirming or demonstrating something in particular about the product. There’s a continuum to … Read more

Last time out, I was responding to a coaching client, a tester who was working in an organization fixated on test cases. Here, I’ll call her Frieda. She had some more questions about how to respond to her managers. What if they want another tester to do your tests if you are not available? “‘Your tests’, or ‘your testing’?”, I asked. From what I’ve heard, your tests. I don’t agree … Read more

Recently, during a coaching session, a tester was wrestling with something that was a mystery to her. She asked: Why do some tech leaders (for example, CTOs, development managers, test managers, and test leads) jump straight to test cases when they want to provide traceability, share testing efforts with stakeholders, and share feature knowledge with testers? I’m not sure. I fear that most of the time, fixation on test cases … Read more