Today, I was assigned the testing of our search   functionality. And thus began my quest for test cases. I was given three days to come up with test cases and started searching for test cases. Where did I look and what did I find? My research and findings are   presented to you below.

In the Newsgroups

I thought I’d look at it in the newsgroups; there are so many newsgroups for testing folks. I thought of posting a question in one of these forums so that I can pick up the answers and use them as test cases. I also went and did a quick search at the old results in those forums to find an answer.

In the Product Support Forums

I did a check in the product support forums; I was searching for earlier users who have had similar problems with this functionality and tried to extract test cases from those stories.

With other testers who tested the product earlier

There were other testers who tested this earlier; I tried to corner them during coffee breaks, booked lunch meetings with them and tried to get some test cases from them for this functionality.

In Google

Google was a great source of test cases; so many test cases for so many search functionalities. I had to spend a lot of time flushing out unwanted information from this ton of information that I got from Google.

In the requirements document

The quickest way to write test cases is to take a requirement, and re-write it as a test case… heh heh. I am an expert at doing that today and got so many test cases using this technique . It is a skill that you can very easily master, and I will write a separate column on this skill later this year.

Test cases of other similar projects executed by the company

I raided the repository of similar projects that our company executed in the past; within the 1st hour of my search, I found at least 15 such projects. I went and copied the test cases of those projects and was able to reuse many of them.

From the questions of my customer

My customer had so many questions for me. Most of the time, he does not even remember that he asked the question. We tried to get a set of test cases from the questions he posted earlier; that also did lead him to think that our test team is thinking similar to how he’d approach testing.

At the end of this exercise in three days, by doing the above, I came up with a set of 159 test cases; I even prioritized them as high, medium and low and most people agreed with my test cases. I got rewarded since people thought I was doing a good job. Do you know why? The guys who reviewed my document looked at the same place and when they found both common, they really thought I was doing a good job. To be truthful, I was actually doing a good “fake” job. Why? I forgot to look for the test cases in one place.

Which place? My Brain. Not once did I ever ask myself if I could trust myself in writing the test cases. I forgot that I have become an expert in searching; all the knowledge available at my disposal spoilt me for choice and instead of using those forums to add value to the test cases I write, I did the opposite; I got away with it since all the reviewers did not use their brain for the reviews; they went and checked the same place to see if they could find some flaws. Well, I am sure I am not alone… I am sure that there are so many people just like me. Are you like me?

 

Fake Software TesterA Fake Tester's DiaryFake Tester,Fake Tester's DiaryToday, I was assigned the testing of our search   functionality. And thus began my quest for test cases. I was given three days to come up with test cases and started searching for test cases. Where did I look and what did I find? My research and findings are  ...