Putting Experience to the test Moving from Tech Comm to Software Testing Putting Experience to the test Raymond Gillespie TCUK15

Software testing Can technical communicators become testers? What can Tech Comm learn from Software Testing?

What is testing? “…testing is the process of comparing ‘what is’ with ‘what ought to be.’…” Lee Copeland Copeland, L. (2004) A Practitioner’s Guide to Software Test Design, Artech House Publishing, MA

Dynamic vs static testing Static analysis of code using tools Static testing Without execution of software With execution of software Dynamic testing Reviews

Objectives Finding defects Gaining confidence Decision making Preventing defects

Test levels

Change-related testing Test Types Blackbox testing Non-functional testing Whitebox testing Confirmation Change-related testing Regression 7

White-box testing Software Under Test

Example: Airline ticket issuing system 6 Test Case: Non-gold-card holder on full flight 1 Gold card? Gold card? Economy full? Economy full? N Y Y N Business class full? Business class full? 8 2 Y 7 Business class full? Economy Y 3 N 9 Economy N Upgrade 4 Upgrade 10 Bump off flight Bump off flight 5 Boarding card Example from: Black, Rex, Erik Van Veenendaal, Dorothy Graham (2011) Foundations of Software Testing Cengage Learning, Andover, UK.

Black-box testing Software Under Test

Can a technical communicator become an effective software tester? ‘Black-box’ functional testing Test design methods Test management processes Test tools

What can a technical communicator learn from software testing? #1 presence of faults #7 Absence of errors fallacy #2 Exhaustive testing impossible 7 principles #6 Testing is context dependent #3 Early testing is good #4 Defects occur in clusters #5 Pesticide paradox

#1 Presence of faults

#2 Exhaustive testing is impossible

#3 Early testing is good

#4 Defect clustering

#5 The pesticide paradox

#6 The Testing context

#7 Absence of errors fallacy

Can the 7 principles be applied to documentation?

#1 Presence of faults

#2 Exhaustive testing is impossible

#3 Early testing is good

#4 Defect clustering

#5 The pesticide paradox

#6 The Testing context

#7 Absence of errors fallacy

The ‘oracle problem’ What are the correct results? Software Under Test

Summing up

Any questions?

Thanks for your time! raygillespie@yahoo.com