Had another awesome session on my #TestingTour with @tottiLFC discussing all about Test Strategy.— Parveen (@Parveen_Khan10) March 8, 2020
Thank you so much Toyer for sharing all your ideas and learnings 😊🙏#TestingTour #FeelingAwesome #Motivated #Inspired pic.twitter.com/4gPuG8GcEU
Before even deciding the topic or booking a session with Toyer , I had been having conversations with Toyer around Test Process and Test Strategy. When I booked the session , I suggested Test Strategy as a topic for our session and Toyer was happy to do it. I was really keen on this topic as I have always struggled on this and having those previous conversations with Toyer where he shared his innovative ideas helped me a lot.
Session :
The topic was decided but I was not really sure if we could just use any sample application to use for our session to define the test strategy. So I just thought we could decide this during our session.
We started off by discussing Toyer's approach of sketching out the Testing Strategy from the scratch. He mentioned that we should always think of different testing activities all the way from the start to implementation.
We should always plan and start sketching out test strategy based on what process the team is following. For ex: If the team follows kanban then we should be keeping that in mind while planning our test strategy or if the team follows scrum that the planning goes different.
Then step towards thinking about what are the tasks that needs to be performed by the testers. The interesting part was how Toyer used 3 different buckets while defining test strategy.
- People
- Process
- Tech
When you get a huge blank canvas to define the test strategy from the scratch, its too overwhelming to decide where to start from and how. But these three buckets would help in those situations to start organising and defining the activities and keep adding them to the relevant buckets. This was so awesome to learn as I had always struggled with the starting point and this gives an organised view to start with. Toyer mentioned that he uses mindmap tool to create the test strategy and its one of my favourite tool as well.
Our discussion was getting more and more interesting . When defining test strategy it always going to depend on
- What is my application?
- What is my process(agile/scrum/kanban)?
- What tools are we using?
Toyer mentioned that these are the main factors and we should always ask "Where" , "How" and "What" while defining test strategy. We did not have enough time to use an application and build a test strategy for that. But hopefully we might have a follow up session to try this.
Learnings
- People, process and tech buckets , this was a great way to start organising the test strategy.
- We need to consider all the activities by testers from start till the implementation while planning the strategy.
- Test strategy should be aligned to the process being used(scrum/kanban).
- A reminder that we have to always remember that we are masters of testing.
- The biggest takeaway for me was how to start when you have been given a complete blank canvas.
It was amazing session and finally I'm glad I got chance to pair with Toyer. I'm really very thankful for all the ideas he shared with me during the session.
