Stay On Target, A Weekend Testing Recap

This was a bit of a departure from normal, but I think well worth it. Adam Yuret, who is a regular weekend testing participant, also works with VolunteerMatch.org. The idea behind Volunteermatch is to have individuals who want to help with a good cause, and for those self same good causes, to have a point where they can intersect.

Adam contacted us after VolunteerMatch had completed three sprints (referred to as an "Epic" in agile parlance; suffice it to say that it reflects nine weeks worth of work. As they were preparing to roll out these changes, Adam felt we'd be an ideal group to focus on this kind of challenge.

Today’s charter was as follows:

“Your mission is to test within the boundaries of the non profit admin interface.
We’re interested in finding meaningful defects within the constraints of this charter.

We’re not interested in any browsers other than the following:

Tier 1 Browsers are IE8 and Firefox 3.6 on a windows platform. if we find issues in Safari 4 or IE7 we’ll certainly address them. Our top priorities are IE8 and FF3.6.

Anything outside this NPAI interface is also out of scope.

I will act as stakeholder and answer any questions you may have. There are a few known issues but we’ll address those if they come up in testing.” –Adam Yuret

Each testing session has two components. The first is the actual testing. the second is the debrief and discussion following the testing session. We debated a number of challenges that we as testers face when scoping test effort, such as:

• Is the scope set in stone?
• Should we as testers challenge the boundaries? 
• Why is it that individual testers are more willing to challenge or question the scope of a mission than a testing group is? 
• Are there times where going beyond the pre-defined boundaries is not only desirable, but necessary?

These questions and more were debated and discussed in today's session, for complete blow by blow details, please feel free to read the Experience Report and Chat Transcript.