No Test Cases Required: Test Session Chartering
Michael Bolton
DevelopSence
It’s easy for some people to believe that testing is All About Test Cases. But it isn’t. Testing is so much more than test cases!
To test is to evaluate a product. We evaluate a product by learning about it through exploration and experimentation, which includes questioning, studying, modelling, manipulating, observing — and deciding whether the product we’ve got it is the product we want. To be credible, we must also be able to cover the product with testing, and to describe what we know and how we know it. That process of investigation, discovery, and reporting might include test cases, but it certainly doesn’t require them. Indeed, over-focusing on test cases may suppress our ability to find problems that matter, and to investigate the problems we find.
In this Webinar, Michael Bolton takes a hard look at the testing mission and how we go about it. As alternatives to test cases, he’ll offer ways to think about planning, coverage, and reporting that can help to refocus testing on its primary goal: helping people to find problems that threaten the on-time, successful completion of the project.
About Me!
Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn’t realize they could solve. He is the co-author (with senior author James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing, a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure. Michael has 25 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For the last 15 years, he has led DevelopSense, a Toronto-based testing and development consultancy. Prior to that, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation for eight years, during which he managed the company’s flagship products and directed project and testing teams both in-house and around the world.