Are organisations going to test more? Does acceptance testing still make sense? Is exploratory testing indispensable? Every day we speak to IT professionals who are involved in software testing. This results in great conversations and insights in managing a testing process. Reason for us to present seven common topics about testing to our Testersuite fans.
The Testersuite fans know what it is like to manage a testing process. How do they view questions that other IT professionals have? Below are the answers to the seven questions and statements we asked them.
We are becoming increasingly dependent on IT systems. A large part of our lives is now digital. Where thirty years ago automation was a convenient support, we are now largely dependent on it. This means that we need to test IT systems more and more. Fortunately, more and more organisations are realising this.
Manual testing remains an important part of the testing process. Fortunately, under certain conditions test actions can be automated. Think of frequent regression testing on a stable environment. Keep in mind that automated testing is only possible on the basis of existing test scripts. Creating new test cases or 'experience based' testing remains manual work. A combination of both methods is the ideal situation.
As indicated in the previous question, the combination of manual and automated testing is the most desirable. Automated testing is mainly a means to test more in a shorter time. It complements all your other manual testing activities. The statement that automated testing saves time, people and money is not valid.
This question yields surprising answers. IT professionals do not seem to be leaving the waterfall methodology behind. This is remarkable in a world where terms like scrum, agile and DevOps are much in demand. On the other hand, we should not forget that Agile/DevOps mainly adds value to software development. There are still IT projects where Waterfall (or a hybrid model) works better.
Acceptance testing is important. The Testersuite fans are clear about this, given the above answers. This should not come as a surprise. Finally, software testing is also partly about creating happy users and about formal acceptance.
What is exploratory testing? According to the definition, exploratory testing is the simultaneous design and execution of tests to learn the system and to design and execute new tests using the information obtained. In this form of testing, human intuition and progressive insight is most important. This makes this form of testing very important as a supplement to automated testing.
It is only natural that our fans do not want to reinvent the wheel and want to help each other wherever possible. When we talk about sharing content, we are talking about things like test objects (applications) and test cases. It is still important to stay alert and to ensure that the content you use from another organisation matches your specific situation and application set-up. Sharing test results is less useful and even risky. It entails the risk of drawing conclusions based on the test results of other organisations. You will always have to test within your own specific situation. It is naive to think that you do not need to test (properly) because another organisation has approved something.
Do you have any comments or reactions to the above that you would like to share with us? Then send an email to info@testersuite.nl. Would you like to stay informed? Then click here for the latest Testersuite news.
