Experts view on different Activities on Testing
The testing is anything that involves at least following four activities:
1) Configure: Prepare the product for the test. Put it into the right starting state. Otherwise, your test results may be tainted by rogue variables.
2) Operate: Feed the product data. Give it commands. Interact with it in some way. Otherwise, it just sits here, and what you’re doing is reviewing, not testing.
3) Observe: Collect information about how the product behaves, output data, the state of the system as a whole, interactions with other products, and so on. You can’t observe everything, but anything you
don’t observe may blind you to a bug.
4) Evaluate: Apply rules, reasoning, or mechanisms that will detect bugs in the data you observed. Otherwise, you will either report no problems, or you will just pass the data through to your clients, who will have to perform the evaluation themselves.
Test creation may take many forms. Don’t get too hung up on form, just make sure these four activities are happening. Focus on the thinker who is performing them and how well the tests fulfill the intended strategy and mission of testing.
Conclusion: It’s the testing that matters, not how you parse the testing into packages you call tests.
I came across an excellent book titled – Lessons Learned in Software Testing – written by the great testing expert – Cem Kaner & others, The above four wonderfully described activities on testing fascinated me. Thus I felt like sharing them with my tester friends as well.
Many More Articles on Software Testing Approaches
An expert on R&D, Online Training and Publishing. He is M.Tech. (Honours) and is a part of the STG team since inception.