Some ways to reduce the complexity of manual functional testing

by TestFortExpert on 01/23/2012

Nowadays most of the testers will attribute their professional experience to the analytical (Analytic) and standard (Standard) test in the classification of schools by Bret Pettichord. These schools stand on strict control of test coverage and compliance with all prescribed procedures when performing tests.

The testing process, in this case, includes the following actions:

Analysis of the functional requirements
Formation of questions and comments (or test requirements) on the functional requirements
The study of the updated functional (or test) requirements
Development of a manual test script
Reading the text of the test script
Implementation of actions outlined in the test scenario
Analysis of results of completed actions
Documenting the results of completed actions
Registration of the defect

Thus, there is a lot of information transformations before it takes the form, which is the result of the test. In addition, each transformation is made through a brain of the tester. This complicates the testing process for two reasons. First, the conversion of information from text form to the form in which it is stored in the brain and especially back, take a long time. Secondly, the constant reading of the text and generation of other text, based on the previous one is tiring man, significantly reducing his productivity.

If you expand the above items in a single chain of transformations, we obtain the following picture:
FR -> brain -> TR -> brain -> TS -> brain -> Actions -> Results -> brain -> + defects results’

FR – Functional requirements
TR – the test requirements
TS – test scenarios
results’ – the results are documented

The way to reduce time-consuming during the manual functional testing lies in the brain involvement degree reducing in the transformations represented above until they are completely automated.

Currently, there are the following ideas:

Automatic registration of defects on the basis of the activities carried out
Generation of test cases based on formal functional requirements
Generation of test scenarios based on the original functional requirements (e.g., keywords)
Using standard tests for the standard types of information systems

There is another, more radical option – the exclusion of all intermediate artifacts and reducing of the process to the following:

FT -> brain -> Actions -> Results -> brain -> Defects

Unfortunately, this is not an option when you need to monitor the testing process very closely.

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