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Showing posts from September, 2008

a test technique

Very recently I was part of a bug hunt: an effort to find as many defects as possible in a UI in a short period of time. I am not an outstanding UI tester. I have worked with testers whose eye for detail, line, color, consistency, work flow, etc. etc. make them really outstanding testers to have examining the front end. But I've spent most of my career on green-screen apps, test automation, environment maintenance, stuff like that. I lack the really expert artist's eye that great UI testers have. That said, I was on a roll on this particular bug hunt, finding a lot of nice, sophisticated bugs. It was classic ET: decide a test approach, determine your next test based on the results of your last test; and when you stop finding bugs, change your test approach. I'd followed all the logical paths I could think of; I'd tried really big inputs and really small inputs; I'd tried permissions errors, navigation errors, and checking error messages themselves. I tried