I’d like to see how sustainable are our different testware (test cases, bugs …)
From which perspective you judge them in order to make them more sustainable ?
I’m also a bit confused if we want to choose maintainability & sustainability as quality attributes, how can we distinguish the practices ? When I started thinking about sustainability for testware I find myself on maintainability aspects
update: by sustainability I’m refering to the intersection of the 3P
Planet: environmental How to make the planet happy;
Hi @sebastian_solidwork,
To be honest behind the scene I’m thinking about what Jan Reimann talked about in his blog by measuring energy consumption. I’m also looking for other possible ideas
Original post updated to answer your question about what I mean by sustainability.
In order to determine whether something is sustainable, the life cycle can be used: Create, Read, Update, and Delete.
Create:
In a lot of test approaches, the focus is on the thing which have the most product risk. This reduces energy and quality problems in the future.
During a project I noticed that that was an overlap in the system test and the user acceptance test. This lead to frustation,
Test cases cost more time to make then checklists, Exploratory testing can also start with less paperwork. It would be good to consider the use of test cases.
If test cases are neededm consider keyword driven testing, test automationn and/or living documentation. E.g. unit tests and Cucumber,
It is good to have appointments about improvements and changes to the test test strategy.
Read:
In the past, I noticed that test plans were highlly focused on the test team. I spent my share of paper and effort yo make a proper document. I noticed that docunments like test plans and status reports are not read often by the business. Not all information was relevant for them.
Test cases can take some time to understand why it it being tested.
In a healthcare service providing company I had good experiences with listing test results in the defect registration system. The auditors had no problem with this administration.
Update:
Test cases can cost a lot of time to maintain. Even worse, if a test case is copied and adjusted many times, then a lot of typing is needed to update the test ware. Once lbert Mohan and I gave a worksop about a sustainable test approach. There was an exercise to determine how to handle existing test cases.
Detailed test cases can cost a lot of effort to be updated, E,g, if the input fields are exactly described or the buttons are specified. It is better to use a step like “Set the delivery date to 3 January 2023” instead of “Set the Delivery Date field to 3 January 2023”. The textfield might be renamed.
Delete:
This step can onlu be done after reading the test ware.
Often, when I think of sustainability, I think of not having waste and not creating unnecessary work.
So, one aspect of sustainability is to advocate for only doing work that is necessary. There’s a lot of waste in business; we should all look for ways to be more efficient and, therefore, more sustainable.
