#ATAGTR2023 Speaker

From Good to Great: Enhancing Testability in Software Testing

Software testing is a crucial part of the software development lifecycle, ensuring that software meets the desired quality standards and is free from defects. However, testing can be a time-consuming and expensive process, often resulting in delays and cost overruns. One of the key factors that can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of testing is testability – the degree to which software can be easily tested and evaluated. This is a critical yet often the most ignored and undiscussed aspect of software development. Most testers don’t even know or talk about this. Testability is a key and essential component for good testing. It also boosts your testing process and helps you test complex products in an easy and simple manner. Therefore it is very important for testers to have that understanding of it.

In this session We will share our personal experience of how we approached it and how it has helped us in having those conversation with developers, and how we, as a team, collectively worked on it and delivered a good product.

Join our presentation to learn about:

1. Improving testability for testers, with a focus on practical strategies and techniques that can be implemented in software development projects
2. Designing for Testability
3. Challenges associated with improving testability and guidance on how to overcome them. 4.
4. Benefits of Testability By implementing the presented strategies and techniques testers can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of testing and improve the overall quality of software.

• Understanding Importance of Testability
• Need for Testability and Benefits
• Identifying Testability inside your product
• Tips for increasing testability in your product After our session I hope you all would go back and start discussing and implementing testability with your team. Intended audience: Everyone involved in development of a product. Product Managers, Developers and Testers

Testing Tours – Structured Approach to Exploratory Testing

What are Testing Tours?

Imagine you are visiting a new city. Without a plan or a map, you would just be a wanderer. If you’re lucky you might ponder upon a very beautiful place, if not your time and effort would be wasted on some place which you don’t even like or enjoy.

Similarly, when learning about a product through exploration, without a structured approach, it is easy to get lost. We might stumble upon a bug and keep investigating further and lose track of time. We might be so immersed in one feature, that it is easy to lose focus and ignore the other features.

In order to make the most of our precious time and efforts and to truly acquaint ourselves with the intricacies of the product, a structured methodology becomes indispensable.

Testing Tours provide a structured and systematic approach to explore an application from various angles. Just like how a guided tour helps travelers explore different aspects of a city, Testing Tours guide testers through the application/product, helping them uncover its intricacies, functionalities, and potential risks. This approach helps testers to get familiar with the product (under test), thereby improving test coverage, and identifying critical areas and risks leading to better testing.

Why do we need Testing Tours?

When solving a puzzle, you don’t just focus on a single piece. You analyze the picture as a whole and then identify patterns, connections, and crucial pieces. Similarly, testing tours are like sorting pieces of the product. Each tour focuses on a perspective, helping you understand how different parts fit. As you complete tours, you gather insights about the product’s risks and complexities.

Once the tours are done, you have a clear view, guiding you to test thoroughly where needed, much like placing puzzle pieces strategically to complete the image. Just as sorting puzzle pieces aids assembly, testing tours structure exploration for better understanding and familiarity with the product.

Here are some key benefits of implementing testing tours in your testing practice:

• Comprehensive Test Coverage: Testing Tours offer an avenue for comprehensive exploration. Rather than being confined to fragmentary testing, this approach encourages us to try a variety of tours to get familiar with the product
• Anticipate Risks Proactively: Early identification of risks stands as a paramount advantage provided by Testing Tours. By charting a course that traverses the application’s landscape, potential pitfalls and vulnerabilities can be identified at the outset.
• Refined Prioritization: Testing Tours empower testers to weigh the significance of different components and attributes within the application through different perspectives. This informed prioritization aids in channeling efforts towards areas of heightened importance.
• Enhanced Effort Planning: Armed with a structured approach like Testing Tours, testers are equipped to plan their endeavors judiciously. This methodical strategy optimizes resource allocation and testing timelines.
• Bridging Product/Requirement Gaps: By systematically journeying through the application, testers can uncover product/requirement gaps that may otherwise remain unnoticed.

Who should attend this Workshop?

• This workshop is designed for
• Software Testers
• Test Leads
• Project Managers
• Anyone involved in the software testing process

It caters to both beginners and experienced testers who want to enhance their testing skills using a context-driven approach and learn how to effectively implement Testing Tours in their testing process.

What will this workshop cover?

This workshop draws its essence from Mike Kelly’s insightful blog post on Touring Heuristic, coupled with the rich content by Dr. Cem Kaner on Test Design on YouTube. Embracing the art of testing tours has notably enhanced our project endeavors. Now, at ATAGTR, we’re eager to seize this platform and extend our knowledge to the community, thereby enriching our collective testing proficiency.

This workshop will cover the practical demonstration of the touring heuristic – FCC CUTS VIDS with the following agenda:

Topic Wise Breakdown:

1. Introduction to Testing Tours (30 mins)

• Welcome and introduction to the workshop
• Exercise 1 (10 mins): Participants will be given a mission statement and a sample application and asked to perform exploratory testing
• Debrief the problems with unstructured exploratory tests
• Overview of Testing Tours and how they can help

2. Exploring Different Types of Tours (45 mins

Instructors will illustrate the mnemonic and provide a demonstration of a few of the tours using a sample application. (Ex. Spotify)

FCC (15 mins)

• Feature Tour
  • Explain the feature tour by moving through the features & controls of the sample application
• Complexity Tour:
  • Understand complexity and its impact on testing
  • Show the five most complex components of the sample application
• Claims Tour:
  • Discuss the importance of validating product claims
  • Demonstrate a claims tour of the sample application

CUTS (15 mins)

• Configuration Tour:
  • Exploring configurable settings and their implications
• User Tour:
  • Importance of considering diverse user perspectives
  • Define five distinct user profiles and their specific interests from the sample application.
• Testability Tour:
  • Identifying features that enhance testability
• Scenario Tour:
  • Creating realistic usage scenarios
  • Develop five realistic usage scenarios for the sample application.

VIDS (15 mins)

• Variability Tour
  • Understanding the impact of variables
• Interoperability Tour:
  • Assessing integration capabilities and potential compatibility issues
  • Test how the sample application interacts with external systems or components.
• Data Tour:
  • Importance of understanding how data is handled by the product
• Structure Tour:
  • Delving into the application’s physical composition

Exercise 2 (25 mins): Model the product using testing tours. Participants will be divided into groups and will be given one sample application to perform different testing tours and submit their findings. Their findings will be assessed by the instructors and appropriate feedback will be given

3. Conclusion (10 mins)

• More testing tours & resources
• Recap of key learnings and takeaways

4. Q&A session (10 mins)

Lab Requirements

1. Laptop & Internet connection
2. Willingness to learn