Prospective Testing
James Bach, Michael Bolton · 2025
This chapter describes a particular application of Rapid Software Testing, called as prospective testing. A fundamental part of prospective testing is critical distance. Prospective testing happens as a conversation between a tester and a “maker” (such as a developer, business analyst, designer, or user). Critical distance tends to erode in any system where harmony within the team is a high priority. Although continual communication and conversations are important during development, prospective testing reduces the amount of potentially annoying communication between QA, BAs, and developers on the same feature set once coding has begun. Finding the right level of prospective testing requires that users develop a feel for genuine product risk. The chapter presents a set of questions and suggestions for testing prospectively during a meeting with a BA or developer. These questions come into play as soon as there is a proposed product, feature, or requirement on the table to talk about.