Sunday, April 9, 2006

Tester thinking...

Say you were given the following requirements...

  •   Users shall be able to enter any of nine predefined data objects
  •   User interface shall consist of nine blocks of three rows and three columns
  •   Each row, column and/or block shall accept only one member of each data object

What am I describing?


Ever played Soduku?

While indulging my (hopefully temporary) addiction to this brain teasing virus, I spent a few brain cells thinking about testing. I thought about what requirements might look like and led me to wonder *why* requirements so often look like those above. Why not just add a picture of the playing "board" and rules of the game? Wouldn't that be easier?

I also spent a *lot* of time thinking about test cases, combinatorics, valid and invalid puzzles, puzzles with multiple solutions, automation tools to *help* a person solve the puzzle that wouldn't be considered cheating (as opposed to tools to *solve* a puzzle - which are another set of tools entirely) and on, and on, and on...

I don't know that I've *learned* anything that I can articulate yet, but I think I've just found a fantastic tool for training classes! ;)

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, & How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
      you will find it in your life."

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