Reactive Testing
Rex Black · 2016
This chapter discusses behavioral or black-box test design, covering an approach to test design that focuses on reacting to what happens during test execution. The test cases themselves can be described as reactive, since to a great extent testers create the test details on-the-fly in reaction to the reality presented by the system under test. The test manager and test engineers put a framework in place for the tests, giving a general idea of the areas they will test and the conditions they will cover. The size of the time box depends on factors like the risks associated with the test conditions to be covered, the complexity of the area tested, the time required to carry out a typical use case, and so on. To handle the second challenge, high-level descriptions of the test cases, sometimes called test charters, are used to track what was covered. Exploratory testing often proceeds in a sequence of testing sessions. Each session ranges in duration from an hour to two or three hours. There are a couple ways to guard against that mistake. One way is to use reactive tests only in combination with written, pre-designed tests based on a quality risk analysis that address both business and technical risk.