Try It and See If It Works!

Many people still struggle to understand what software testing is. Over the years different professionals from around the world have suggested their own definition of testing. This variety of definitions can be confusing and consequently, we decided to dedicate a separate article to that topic. Let’s explore testing more deeply to understand what software testing is by itself?

Citing James Bach in our previous article we gave you our definition of testing, which was a process of evaluating a product by learning about it through exploration and examination, which includes some degree; questioning, study, modeling, observation, inference etc…

As it’s mentioned in Rapid Software Testing: “Try it and see if it works!”

We should conditionally separate our work into three cycles: procedures, coverage, and oracles.
There are a number of activities included in each cycle.

When we speak about trying we imply checking different variations, versions, inputs. In this stage, testers should attempt simple and complex things. Here you should always remember that simplicity or complexity can be very subjective. Testers should try patterns, combinations and even weird things.

Another equally important cycle is to know where to look and from which angle to look. While exploring items testers should understand what’s there within it and is it the right thing at all or no. You should be able to discover what is missing, are there any hidden things and how it’s changing?

Last but not least, you should never rely or lean on documentation or specifications.  Don’t try to find your answers in specifications. Find as many problems and issues as you can do. A good way is to find differences in the same item in different situations.

To determine when it will work you should discover enough to know under which circumstances it works and under which circumstances it fails to work.

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