How you define testing

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Fatima on June 17, 2009 at 8:55am

Testing people are eyes n ears of customers software is built for. Testing can be of different meaning for different people.
I feel testing as an activity of meeting user expectations either with an intent of finding errors or with a code breaking attitude. I would term my every activity/tactic as testing which make me aware about the issues that can bug an intended user.
(Inspired by James Bach n Michael Bolton's definition of bug)

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by kashif ali on June 17, 2009 at 9:09am

Another defintion form Dr kaner(www.kaner.com)

"Testing is an empirical,technical investigation conducted to provide quality related information
about a software product to a stakeholder"

i think we are the only one in this group :)

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ahmed Mubbashir Khan on June 17, 2009 at 10:32am

No, Dude you are not :)

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by kashif ali on June 17, 2009 at 10:37am

its great to see :)

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ahmed Mubbashir Khan on June 17, 2009 at 10:45am

The gurus says you would find as many definition of "Testing" as many books of software testing are out there.

My personal favorite is of James Bach "Testing is Questioning a Product in Order to evaluate it".
(I know he have added couple of words to this definition some where but unable to find the link as of now.)

Why I really like this:

I like it because its very simple, this doesn't break destination into chunk of words are needed to be defined by themselves, and most importantly it doesn't list down a set (or list of) activities and attitude which are you suppose to do in Testing.

The Best Part:

YOU are allowed to do absolutely any thing in order to evaluate the product.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Fatima on June 18, 2009 at 3:05pm

So Ahmed do yo think testing has no boundaries? Is it?

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ahmed Mubbashir Khan on June 20, 2009 at 9:58am

Well To answer this:

When dose Testing end?
- It doesn't, we just stop Testing

When Can we say there are no more bugs in the Software?
- We can't, Testing can only be used for proving the existence of bugs not for there absence

Some times we come across sleeping bugs (Thanks Ben Simo, for letting me know about this wonderful book) You can't have Test Cases for these kind of bugs.

We all have seen systems behaving abnormally (even crashing or not responding at all) due to configuration and all that, whose bug is this? who is suppose to test it?

So my answer is kind of yes.

But, How to really organize things then, keep bashing the keyboard all day long, 24/7?
No, Bashing keyboard doesn't really helps.
I guess that is the reason we have Context Of Testing, That is reason we Explore Testing, That is reason we don't like scripted Testing that much, That is the reason we use Heuristics, That is reason we set Agenda/Goal for a Session of Testing. This helps us to Learn the App, design and execute cases at the same time and be more productive (OK destructive).


To me Testing by its nature is very generic, we set Goals or boundaries for let say a Type of Testing.

We only try to penetrate in the system in Penetration Testing
We Try to Check the functionality of the system in Functional Testing (This sounds very 90s, User Stories might be a little trendy ;))
We Try to Load/Over Load the system To Test its performance.

These are just my thoughts, you can have your own (we can't set boundaries on thoughts you know.)

---
Regards.
Mubbashir

P.S it remind me of boundaries.. boundary Value analysis.. Input classes ;)

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Fatima on June 24, 2009 at 4:59am

yeah and it reminds me an adage that 'boundaries are meant to be crossed, not obeyed' :)
And really i do the same while doing boundary testing.

▶ Reply to This