Choosing the right approach for the test plan

Following my game of who-is-who last week I continued to think about the questions (or test cases) used in the game. I was wondering if a traditional test approach would work in a setup like the one encountered in who-is-who.

 

So I tried preparing the game just like I would if I was following the approach suggested by the V-model:

·         I listed all questions I would ask (test case preparation)
·         I ordered the cases in a sequence (fixed test plan)
·         And then I played the game (test execution)

 

Result: I lost miserably – After several games where I was tweaking my test plan I did not win a single game. The reason was, that I could not change the test plan based on experience gained while playing, meaning that some of my questions have little to no impact.

 

Then I changed strategy – Experience driven test execution following this approach:

·         I listed all questions I would ask (test case preparation)
·         I asked questions based on experience (no fixed test plan)
·         And then I played the game (test execution)

 

Result: I started winning, but I spotted some problems in the approach – I found situations where test coverage was insufficient, and lacking test cases I was in situations where my poor test coverage resulted in me loosing, or taking the long route to the answer I was looking for.

 

Conclusion: Changing strategy again to a charter-driven, experience based test would likely have been the best approach for a game like this. There are a lot of strategies when testing, picking the right one is the hard part. This suggests that the test needs to be driven by more than a good question or test case – That being the ability to ask the right question at the right time.

 

Happy testing!

 

/Nicolai