I was speaking to a software tester recently who was asked by their manager:
If you had 5 minutes to test a web based application, what would you test and why?
Now, before people start saying “What do you mean by a web based application?” “What does it do?” “Why do I only have 5 minutes to test it?” etc, note that this is third hand.
The person who was asked this gave an answer suggesting to start with a login page and potential issues that might arise around that because they thought that if users can’t log in to an application then it’s a show stopper.
They were worried that this wasn’t a software tester/QA mindset.
In relation to this persons login answer, I suggested that they take a look at Test Ideas For A Login Screen. Or some other areas in the How To Test category as it’s not a bad approach to flesh out. (I also assured them that this is a pretty good software tester/QA mindset).
I’ve come to learn that every tester will approach the same challenge in a completely different way so here is my answer for the 5 minute challenge:
I have Spectrum on Chrome. As soon as I open the application, I would get that running. I would also start up the screen reader that I use. If I only have 5 minutes I’m going to whack a lot into it!
I would then open developer tools on my browser and note any strangeness there, are there cookies I can edit, does that matter? You could spend a while on this depending on the site so I’d try to time box that if I could.
Is the site on http or https? Does that matter?
While I’m doing all of this I’m also thinking: How intuitive is this site? Do I feel like I know what I’m doing?
I think this links quite well to something that @simon_tomes shared on the Club Take the 5 minute challenge! What are Risks? But I was wondering, if you were in this testers position what answer might you give to that manager? How would you spend the 5 minute window you have testing that application?