“Creative Thinking” or “Out of the Box Thinking” is a phrase that we often come across at our workplace or even in our day to day life.
Have you ever given a try to find out what it means when we say “Thinking out of the Box”?
As per Wikipedia: “Thinking outside the box is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel or Creative Thinking”
But then the above definition can be extended to our field i.e. Software Testing.
When we step into the field of software testing, the first thing we are being taught or we learn is the Two Boxes – a white box and a black box. Once taught, then what we always do is either black box or white box testing. This has limited our minds from thinking beyond the boxes.
Did we ever think that going beyond the black box or white box testing could help us in gaining a higher pace towards a solid career in Software Testing?
Table of Contents:
Techniques To Follow While Doing Software Testing
We will be discussing a few techniques here which I and many of my Mentors will follow while doing Software Testing:
Rapid Fire Test Case Creation
This technique, as the name suggests, is about rapidly creating test cases. It’s a human approach to testing which links testing directly to a performance by a human being.
The initial things that come to mind when we talk about test case creation are a Requirement Document, an Excel Sheet and some guidelines provided by the organization. For once, keep aside all these things and get an idea of what you think you are about to test.
Pick up a Pen & a Paper and write as many scenarios as you can write within 60 seconds. Repeat the process until you are not able to think of more scenarios or ideas and finally review them.
You will be surprised to see the number of ideas/test cases that you already have without considering the requirement document.
Cross Testing Ideas (Analogy)
Before you start testing an application, keep in mind a similar application that you have used in the past. Doing this will allow you to identify issues that are not related to requirements but represent a common/generic feature that should be present in the application but has got overlooked.
For Example: If you are testing a portal, use it like you use your email program or any application which you worked on before and see how the application behaves.
I remember exploring a critical defect using this technique. I was testing a secure login for a finance application and tried altering the URL and navigating to a different page (which was a defect in my last tested application).
By doing this, I can bypass the login mechanism using Secure ID! This was neither a test case nor highlighted by any other team member as a possible test scenario.
Reverse or Backward Testing Ideas
What is the normal workflow you follow while testing? Isn’t it the exact same steps that were used while developing the application: “Requirements >> Unit Cases >> Integration Testing >> System Testing” or is there any other approach?
The minds of the people working on the development of an application are bound to think in the direction which will cover most of the positive testing. The End User might not think in the same direction every time. This is why Production Defects or UAT Defects exist even after extensive rounds of Unit Tests, Integration Tests, and System Tests.
For example, Requirement says that you can upload a file that does not exceed 10 MB of file size. Most testers will follow by uploading a 1MB, 2MB, 3 MB or more until 10 MB is reached or an error message is displayed. Why not start with 10MB and then try 11MB and then 9 MB?
This example is nothing but a BVA (Boundary value analysis). Still, how many of us have tried using BVA in scenarios other than the input box?
Questioning
Ideally, every QA engineer should know the purpose of a requirement. Putting up questions will help a QA Engineer to refine his purpose of testing. If a QA Engineer is good at questioning, he/she will be good at testing by default. You need to make sure that none of the questions (how so ever small or silly) are ignored.
In turn, questioning will also enhance the Domain Knowledge of the person who is performing the testing.
Remember: “The only silly question is the one that is unasked.”
Researching
Research proves to be very beneficial before starting the testing. Just be aware of the issues that other people have faced while doing a similar assignment. Say you are required to start cross-browser testing as one of your assignments.
Before starting the tests, researching the issues which other people encountered while using the same browser will help you find defects before starting the actual testing.
Pause: An Icebreaker
Testing can sometimes be a monotonous process and the ideas may begin to saturate. You might start feeling that none of the solutions is working out or you might even run out of ideas. In such cases, an effective pause can do a lot of wonders and could help you kick start from where you left off.
A Pause could be a Coffee or simply gazing out of the window or anything you like to refresh yourself.
Conclusion
In addition to being creative, factors like timing, the speed of implementation of ideas and their execution are also of high importance. You might get an excellent idea but what if it is too late to implement it?
Listed above are just a few ideas that will help you generate more ideas in turn.
Further Reading
- Software Testing Exercises – New Platform to Test Your Testing Skills and Share Practical Ideas
- What is Negative Testing and How to Write Negative Test Cases?
- 10 Skills to Be a Great Tester: How A Tester Can Be A Great Tester
- Exploratory Testing – How to Think Beyond Traditional Testing Boundaries?
- How Can a Tester Think as an End User?
This is a guest post by Mohit Khatri. The author specializes in testing Banking Applications, Automation Testing Frameworks, and Security Testing. If you want to guest post on this blog, read the guidelines here.
If you have more creative techniques that you think have helped you at any point, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
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Nice article, good points discussed, but i wonder why only 2 points ? (i.e. rapid-fire and backward testing ideas)
rest of the article is quite ‘in the box’
anyway, as a whole, the article is good and at least different from many ‘typical’ articles, which is a good sign
keep it up dude
this type of articles really helps to all the testing engineers in order to test software applications more easily. thanks for this post.
Nice article about the Testers who are thinking out of their environment and all.. good one.. 🙂
good article many use for software engineers
Good One. We can also implement more techniques such as mentioned into above block by thinking differently.
These are the same things which i came across in my more than 2 years working experience.
If you are doing the same things which Mohit has listed down, trust me you would be on right path for a excellent testing career.
Thanks
Very good points.. I mostly do reverse test and questioning. I will try other techniques.
Great article ! yeah.. Its just different.. really out of the box 🙂
Need Automation Tool -Testing training from proffesional. Need ur guidance. Can any one help me Here!
This is a good post.. It is true that testers have to think differently always. It will help them to improve alot..
All the best
I am new to software testing. I hope if i follow according to your steps, it will be good for building up a nice career in Testing.
Good Read .. Quite Motivating…
Good one. Thanks for sharing. It’s very helpful to get more interest in this field.
Thanks!
In what areas of Functional testing there is huge demand in the market.
Hi,
Can anyone please tell me what are the different software that are used in Software Testing.
Thanks
Nishant Balgovind
This post is really very good. Bcoz i m new in this field it will help me a lot.
Thank u.
Very important article for all the testers.
Nice Post ! I like it. 🙂
This thinking makes a tester …. the different….GOOD ONE….
Hi Can you please explain the issue in the example given under ‘cross testing ideas’ please?
Hi ,
Very usefull to kick start the work and helpfull in think different . thanks for info keep updating .
Difference between System testing and Black box testing
The post is very good..It will help for all the people who want to build their career in software tesing
Thank you
Its Good Article.
If The project goes Success they wont say tester did a good job,by the way If project got some issues in Production they will blame why tester has not found the issue in Test regions,
So do testing in different manner,Break the application.
good luck,
Ranjith
Well said. Just want to add my perspective to think out of the box. this is quite general but can be applied easily in software testing as well.
– think differently and do things differently
– always try to find new ideas and work accordingly
good luck,
An informative blog. Surprisingly i do follow couple of techniques. However i will make a note and will try to follow the remaining.
Thank you
The article is EXCELLENT. Thanks for the article.
very useful article . It really helps to all the software test engineers:)
very heplful article ,, thank you
“speed of implementation of ideas and their execution are of high importance”
This is really truth.
Good article. Thanks
Hi,
It really helps me a lot. This article is helpful for those who are struggling with the idea of how to test. By reading this, i have gained some knowledge about testing. I hope that you can put up some more useful articles.
Thanks,
Very nice….we were doing the same things in our project but we don’t know the exact terms while we testing..after reading this i got confidence…..
Its really helpful for me thanks
Thanks for this, It’s so good article. please keep it up 🙂
Nice Article……..
sir i read your its very good but it is need that you should add any excel sheet as an example it is better to understand
Being a prospective tester have been browsing. I rate your concepts THE BEST. Brief, yet complete. Simple in explaining the complexities. Ex: Write up on All About Database Testing. There a class in your presentation format. Going thru makes us feel one level higher. Thanks.
Thank you so much.. what a great ideas 🙂
A good article for candidates preparing for interviews!
It is conceptually simplified. Ur work is praiseworthy.
This is a good post. I totally agree with this idea of writing down the scenarios. This is what I do when I am not given a requirements document.
Please email me more such articles.
Very nice article…Thank you 🙂