For QA testers – review of the book “Test Design. Practical guide” by Olga Nazina

Why is it needed, this test design?

As the author writes, if you talk to doctors, each of them will say that viruses and bacteria adapt to medications that become less effective over time. The same thing happens with software tests – applications become more complex, development environments change, users’ client devices are updated, so tests also need to be “kept in good shape” and reviewed regularly.

More formally, test design is a software testing technique designed to optimize QA team resources and improve error detection efficiency. It is a set of techniques and skills that help testers use their time, software and hardware resources more efficiently, while achieving maximum coverage of the components under test.

In the context of testing, this means conducting a minimum number of tests while simultaneously identifying the maximum number of errors in the software product. Effective test design allows you to focus efforts on key areas of the system where problems are most likely to occur.

On the other hand, minimizing testing efforts through the optimal selection of test scenarios and test data makes it possible to identify software defects that might otherwise go undetected with a non-systematic approach to testing.

There's a bonus in the book from the author – a selection of checklists for standard testing operations. They allow you to remember what to check in a given situation. Use them in your work, replenish and expand them in accordance with the features of your system.

What's inside the book

The table of contents of the book “Test Design: How to Design Tests to Find More Bugs” is again placed at the end of the publication, which is unusual and, in my opinion, inconvenient for computer literature. For this reason, the table of contents was not even included in the book excerpt (preview) on the publisher’s website. But this time I will not repeat the table of contents in the post, I will simply name the main topics covered in the book:

TABLE OF CONTENTS Topics:

1. Equivalence classes are a technique for dividing input data into groups whose representatives behave identically. The author provides step-by-step recommendations for applying this approach.

2. Boundary values ​​- analysis of the boundaries of acceptable values ​​for various data types (numbers, dates, strings, etc.). Examples of determining technological, logical and arbitrary boundaries are given.

3. Test analysis – techniques for optimizing test suites by combining, eliminating duplicates and identifying redundancies.

4. Pairwise testing technique – a method of generating test scenarios that cover all possible pairs of input parameter values.

5. Checklists – checklists for various aspects of testing (search filters, numeric and text fields, forms, communications, etc.).

6. Exploratory testing – a description of free, scenario and directed testing techniques using a variety of heuristics and mnemonics.

7. Use cases – a structured approach to describing test scenarios, taking into account the actors, their goals, steps and alternatives.

8. Decision tables – a technique for modeling decision logic in the form of a tabular representation.

9. State and transition diagrams are a visual graphic description of the behavior of the system in various states.

10. Additional diagrams and diagrams – various options for visual representation of test scenarios are considered.

Bottom line

Book “Test Design. How to Design Tests to Find More Bugs provides a valuable, practical guide to test design in the software quality assurance industry. The author shares extensive knowledge and experience in designing tests that help identify more defects in the software being developed.

Advantages of the book:

• A detailed and structured presentation of various test design techniques

• Many practical examples of applying the approaches

• Tools and tools for implementing the described techniques

• Clear recommendations on the application and limitations of the techniques

• Focus on finding defects rather than just covering requirements

Disadvantages (this opinion may not be shared by everyone):

• The book is focused primarily on manual testing, paying less attention to automation

• The topic of exploratory testing is covered in much more detail than other topics (in itself, this can be an advantage)

• I would like more examples of implementation of the described approaches within specific tools/frameworks.

In general, the book can be safely recommended to both practicing testers and students of IT courses in the specialty of QA testing. Mastering the test design practices from the book will raise your professional level to a fairly high level.

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Good luck in mastering the testing profession!

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