An Introduction to Specification-Based Test Design Techniques as per ISTQB Advanced Level Syllabus
Test analysts and technical test analysts lay major attention to design, implementation and execution of tests using various testing techniques. Specification-based techniques are one of such techniques.
Specification-based techniques are popular by more refined names like behavior-based techniques or Black Box test design techniques. These techniques can be used for any level of test activity. These are used by both test analysts and technical test analysts, but exploited mainly by the test analysts.
Code is designed and developed from the software requirement�s
specifications (SRS) documents being the primary input documents. Likewise specification-based test techniques too are based upon the test conditions & test cases derived from the SRS documents.We can make our specifications that can be in the form of text documents, pictures, models, compilation of features, or any other document which could help us in understanding as to what we expect from the software & how it is going to accomplish that.
Test coverage is represented by the percentage of the specified items addressed by the designed tests. Coverage of all the specified items does not necessarily indicate complete test coverage, but it does indicate that we have addressed what was specified. For further coverage, we may need to look for additional information.
ISTQB Advanced Level syllabus addresses following seven types of specification-based techniques
Sometimes one or more of these techniques are combined to create our tests. For example, the conditions identified in a decision table might be subjected to equivalence partitioning to discover multiple ways in which a condition might be satisfied. Tests would then cover not only every combination of conditions, but also, for those conditions which are partitioned, additional tests would be generated to cover the equivalence partitions.
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