Bj Testing Talks

You are testing a particular software. You get an idea to play with software differently. But if you forget to note it down, you will lose for sure, and that can be helpful to you in testing other software. So, do you note down those ideas? And when you are not getting more ideas, do you read some documentation or blogs to get ideas or discuss with someone to get more ideas for testing?

When you want to test deeply and hunt down more bugs, you need to get rich test ideas. So, I have recently started to document my test ideas that I got from various sources as a checklist in Google Docs. You can have a look at the list that I have listed below:

1. Giving Invalid characters by typing or by copy paste
2. Clicking randomly
3. File permission restriction
4. Undo redo
5. Give different values for same feature that have some common field
6. Increasing the elements -> Load testing
7. Repeating the actions -> Stress testing
8. Break complex system into smaller pieces
9. Try all the ways for import and export. 
10. Observe carefully
11. Use your feelings when testing the software
12. For mobile – portrait and landscape views
13. Check error messages
14. Check help document
15. Explore around the expected results – Evaluate whether its proper
16. Try to think about opposites
17. Export or save it as a file/folder from software -> modify the file/folder at file explorer and import or open it back to the software
18. Look for unexpected context menus
19.  Do it one by one -> step by step
20. Create a test data from scratch. If there’s any existing test data, go through and try to create your own data
21. Try to cancel if some process is in progress .
22. Try to mix different ideas
23. Make mistakes – What if you miss something? What if you misspelled something?

These are just sample test ideas. I will try to keep on updating this list. You can get more test ideas from Heuristics Test Strategy Model and Test Heuristics Cheat Sheet. I also found a helpful resource on creating a test ideas catalogue from YouTube.

In this video, Chris Kenst has explained why we need a test idea catalog and how it can get created. I also learnt from this video how to categorize my test ideas which is really helpful for me to use those ideas for testing software under a particular context.

So, to my fellow testers, start creating your test ideas checklists to perform efficient testing and hunt down more bugs.