Hi,
I see many projects often having little to no specifications because developers do not have enough time to create or update them. It’s difficult for testers to test when we don’t have updated document to base on. As a result, sometimes I’m not sure if it’s a bug or not.
My question is how do you test if you don’t have documents or your documents are outdated? Please advise.
Thanks
Hi Lan,
Firstly, we need to be clear the difference between no document and no requirement. You can still start the testing without documents such as design, specification but I don’t think you can test without requirements.
Testing without a requirement in mind is more like exercising the system, not testing.
so, how do we test without documents?
Michael Bolton wrote a great paper and you can take a look at this: http://www.developsense.com/articles/2005-01-TestingWithoutAMap.pdf
You can also start testing by following oracles in exploratory testing:
HICCUPS:
History
Image
Comparable Products
Claims
User Expectation
Product itself
Purpose
Status
Testing in a project where we have all documents in place is great, but if having no documents is not the end of the world.
Hope it helps