Comments for Stories from a Software Tester

Comment on Automated Testing with Watir and RSpec, Part 2 by ambar

ambar — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:44:25 +0000

This was very helpful. Rspec and Watir seem to make a great combination.

Would be great to see an article on adding PageObjects to the mix, as this seems to be a standard pattern in web application testing.

Comment on Using RSpec and Capybara Without Rails by Cory

Cory — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:45:03 +0000

Thank you for the excellent tutorial. It is the best I have found for an introduction on this topic.

Comment on Tester as Learner by phil kirkham

phil kirkham — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:26:07 +0000

I’ve thought about this a little bit when I’ve studied personality types but never followed it through to the depth you have in this post.

Really interesting read and I’m going to have to study myself now and work out how I go about testing.

Comment on Seeking Conditions in TDL by Jeff Nyman

Jeff Nyman — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:24:34 +0000

I think this is where it becomes necessary to make sure everyone understands there are two levels of implementation to discuss: the implementation of tasks, which will use certain domain terminology, and there is the implementation of how to interact with interface widgets. Both of those are levels of implementation and may be more or less “imperative” sounding.

I’m starting to realize it can become easy to get hung up on how declarative you “should” be. Also, declarative to me does not imply, for example, a lack of specific data conditions or test conditions.

My thoughts are evolving on this as I’m currently on a project that has a complex series of algorithms that are applied in different contexts, depending upon what data conditions you have in place or put in place. I’m hoping to expand on these real-world examples at some point.

Comment on Seeking Conditions in TDL by Tatiana

Tatiana — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:19:53 +0000

Good stuff! Yeah, this gets confusing for me sometimes because I’m never sure if I’m providing too much detail or too little. One thing I know is that I don’t like a lot of repeating. But I see your point about the domain phrasing. If I use the domain phrase in the scenario title then it implies that I would use that same domain phrase in the steps but then of course I’m duplicating. On the other hand it would seem odd to me to not use the domain phrase since we all agreed which phrases to use. This is really interesting now that I think more about it. In looking at some of the scenarios that my team has created, we seem to be all over the board. I wonder how much this argues *against* the idea of steps that are always purely declarative? What do you think?

Comment on Communicating In a Test Description Language by Jeff Lucas

Jeff Lucas — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:27:01 +0000

Thanks for posting this! Going through each of your examples, I understand the issue in abstraction vs specification that you present. But in each case, I started looking at each as a tester:

* How does each format spur me to ask questions about the context, risks, and alternate or overlooked scenarios?

* How can I document those questions and additional information in a format that will help test this test case later? (additional scenarios?, an expanded scenario?, associated notes?)

* How will each format ultimately provide a higher quality product from the team as a whole? (from the standpoint of business analysts, developers, testers, and customers)

I am not suggesting which is the better format or where the ultimate level of abstraction exists, but the blog definitely got me thinking about how to address that within the context of my team. I always enjoy posts that make it difficult to finish reading because they send my imagination in multiple directions. Very good job!

Comment on Seeking Requirements in TDL by Jeff Nyman

Jeff Nyman — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:40:43 +0000

I think so, yes. Ideally, from my perspective, the scenario title makes it immediately clear what condition is being considered relative to the feature. The steps in each scenario simply flesh out the condition with some specifics. The extent to which you keep adding conditions may indicate that you should be using different scenarios. Actually, you have prompted another post on this very topic. (See: Seeking Conditions in TDL.)

Comment on Seeking Requirements in TDL by Tatiana

Tatiana — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:35:00 +0000

Nice post, Jeff. This is something I’ve struggled with as well in terms of explaining the level of detail with the scenario title. What I think I’m hearing you say is that scenario titles can almost be differentiated solely by the test condition that they drive towards. Would that be accurate? So it sounds like the situation your tester friend was talking about was making the conditions more explicit in the scenario title whereas you are arguing to do so in steps?

Comment on Automated Testing with Watir and RSpec, Part 1 by Jeff Nyman

Jeff Nyman — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:47:33 +0000

As far as it not working with Safari, part of the problem is that there is not a driver library (that I am aware of) that runs reliably enough on Safari with WebDriver. Chrome, for example, uses the ChromeDriver and Internet Explorer uses the IEServer. Firefox support tends to be built in. I’m not aware of too much support for Safari. (In the world of Watir there was a SafariWatir driver, but I think that was before Watir-WebDriver.)

Comment on Automated Testing with Watir and RSpec, Part 1 by Priyanka

Priyanka — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:59:58 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for this awesome tutorial.I tried running script testSpike_01.rb with FF and Chrome , it works as expected.But why doesn’t it works with safari?