My first post to the software testing world

 Though, I had plans of writing and maintaining a blog of my own on testing, it never started or rather kept postponing thinking of what to write and how to start ?

Thanks to PS for Initiating this FNL activity which finally made me DO IT.

My first post will be on SBTM (Session Based Test Management).

My previous work experience as a tester included testing activities which starts with going through requirement document, writing test cases and executing the same with a pass/fail status. So everything is documented . We know what we are doing and managers also can keep track of what we are upto.

When I joined Moolya, I took sometime to adjust myself to Exploratory way of testing applications. Though it does not defines any boundary or limitations of testing,  I myself was unable to keep track of what scenarios I have covered or what I missed out. So It will be even more difficult to justify or defend if customer finds a defect in my module later.

So I started asking senior members of moolya and found that there is something called "Session Based Test Management" (SBTM) which helps in keep tracking of what we test.

SBTM is invented by Jonathan Bach and James Bach. This can be considered as structured way of doing Exploratory Testing.

Tester needs to identify the features first to which they want to use SBTM approach and then elements in that features like labels, text box, drop down boxes, Button, links etc. Tester needs to identify what type of testing he/she wants to perform functional, usability, user experience, security, accessibility or UI.

Once you have these information, define the session time  which can range from 45 mins to 2hours depending on the tester's ability to remain focused on their mission.

Start generating test ideas depending on your type of testing and execute them. Record your observations either by making notes or taking screen shots.  You can use word or excel or RapidReporter.exe to maintain your test reports.

This helps in tracking your testing activities and as this is session activity, less of interruption and more of efficiency. You have recordings for everything and this helps in answering customers incase of any post-release bugs. Hope I have justified SBTM and its features according to my knowledge.

Please refer to Satisfice Inc for more and detailed information about SBTM.