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Ask HN: Resources for learning manual software testing?

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Re: Ask HN: Resources for learning manual software testing?

#41

Post by a3n »

Too wrote: post #18
mattmanser wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense to me as there are a load of things good testers do which shouldn't be in instructions and most developers don't think of, otherwise they'd have coded against it. Even silly things like whacking a single button loads really quickly to see what happens. Did you just order 100 tickets? Take down the site? So telling someone to write better instructions seems a bizarre approach.

The purpose of instruction based testing is usually to avoid regression bugs and to make sure requirements are fulfilled. Randomly poking around is also good, this is why you have manually based instruction testing instead of just automating everything, while performing the instructions you usually notice weird things on the side. Neither alternative can replace the other fully.

> The purpose of instruction based testing is usually to avoid regression bugs and to make sure requirements are fulfilled.

You just described my job. :)

Re: Ask HN: Resources for learning manual software testing?

#42

Post by crdoconnor »

a3n wrote: post #40
crdoconnor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing is exactly the type of test that should be automated. Manual testing should be exploratory, it shouldn't be following a script. Computers are there to follow scripts.

I do software QA on a physical device, that has a computer in it. We set up scenarios that exercise the software in specific ways. It is very much manual, following written tests driven by software requirements. This is specifically software testing, although we use the hardware to exercise the software. Even exploratory has written tests that basically say "explore," and they are often assigned with a particular foc…

For something like what you do I find that there's often a cost/benefit trade off to be made:

#1 Create a mock system that you can run automated tests against.

#2 Only do the manual tests.

Which one is the 'right' decision depends largely on the expense of creating that mock system, the complexity of the system under test, the nature of the bugs you're getting from customers and the frequency with which your software changes.

Simple, infrequently changing system? Expensive to set up a mock system? #2.

Complex, frequently changing system? #1 will help more than you realize.

>Even exploratory has written tests that basically say "explore," and they are often assigned with a particular focus.

Of course. However, exploratory shouldn't mean following a script and it shouldn't mean doing repetitive work.

Re: Ask HN: Resources for learning manual software testing?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

stingraycharles wrote: post #3

Hmmm. I think you're looking at this the wrong way: it is not he who should be learning more about manual testing, it is you who needs to learn about how to write manual tests. Manual testing is not at all that different from, say, integration testing: you write a specification of a task that needs to be performed, you write down the expected output, and you compare it with the actual output. What you end up with is…

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