Wednesday 31 July 2013

Checklists for creating test cases


Problem: Test coverage is dictated by daily mental fitness and experience of the tester.

My experience tells me that the daily mental fitness of the tester often directly affect the test coverage. Another thing that will affect test coverage is the experience of the tester. That means worst thing that could happen to test coverage, is if the junior tester goes dancing all night before preparing the test for our most business critical functionality…?!

Solution: Get sources of inspiration to aid the tester in the right direction – Checklists can be a good start!

Well real life happens. But there is no need to worry! With a little inspiration in the form of a checklist you might just keep the show on the road even if the tester is inexperienced, tired, bored, stressed and/or annoyed.

It was a discussion with one of our developers that led me to look for a source of test case inspiration. His experience with test was limited and he needed a source of inspiration for doing unit testing. I came across Software Testing Help, that by the way is an excellent place to look for test inspiration. At STH I found this article called “180+ Sample Test Cases for Testing Web and Desktop Applications – Comprehensive Testing Checklist”

Here is what we use a test case checklist for:
  • Unit testing – Developers can seek inspiration for their unit test cases.
  • Manual test cases – Testers use this for headlines when doing test specifications.
  • Exploratory test sessions – Most of the scenarios can be copy-pasted directly into a test charter.
So what are the pros:
  • Lots of inspiration close at hand
  • Better test coverage

What are the cons:

There is next to nothing related to business domain in the checklist, making is useless for business driven test cases. This means that this really does not fix lack of business related test cases, but none the less it is a good start.
 
 
Have a nice day & Happy testing!

/Nicolai

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