{"id":49,"date":"2009-01-03T22:50:34","date_gmt":"2009-01-04T06:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.satisfice.com\/kaner\/?p=45"},"modified":"2009-01-03T22:50:34","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T06:50:34","slug":"what-is-context-driven-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/?p=49","title":{"rendered":"What is context-driven testing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James, Bret and I published our definition of <em>context-driven testing<\/em> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.context-driven-testing.com\/\">http:\/\/www.context-driven-testing.com\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Some people have found the definition too complex and have tried to simplify it, attempting to equate the approach with Agile development or Agile\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 testing, or with the exploratory style of software testing. Here&#8217;s another crack at a definition:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Context-driven testers choose their testing objectives, techniques, and deliverables (including test documentation) by looking first to the details of the specific situation, including the desires of the stakeholders who commissioned the testing. The essence of context-driven testing is project-appropriate application of skill and judgment. The Context-Driven School of testing places this approach to testing within a humanistic social and ethical framework.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ultimately, context-driven testing is about doing the best we can with what we get. Rather than trying to apply &#8220;<em>best practices<\/em>,&#8221; we accept that very different practices (even different <em>definitions <\/em>of common testing terms) will work best under different circumstances. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>Contrasting <em>context-driven<\/em> with <em>context-aware<\/em> testing.<\/h3>\n<p>Many testers think of their approach as context-driven because they take contextual factors into account as they do their work. Here are a few examples that might illustrate the differences between context-driven and context-aware:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Context-driven testers reject the notion of best practices, because they present certain practices as appropriate independent of context. Of course it is widely accepted that any &#8220;best practice&#8221; might be inapplicable under some circumstances. However, when someone looks to best practices first and to project-specific factors second, that may be <em>context-aware<\/em>, but not <em>context-driven<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Similarly, some people create standards, like IEEE Standard 829 for test documentation, because they think that it is useful to have a standard to lay out what is generally the right thing to do. This is not unusual, nor disreputable, but it is not context-driven. Standard 829 <em>starts with <\/em>a vision of good documentation and encourages the tester to modify what is created based on the needs of the stakeholders. Context-driven testing <em>starts with<\/em> the requirements of the stakeholders and the practical constraints and opportunities of the project. To the context-driven tester, the standard provides implementation-level suggestions rather than prescriptions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Contrasting <em>context-driven<\/em> with <em>context-oblivious<\/em>, <em>context-specific<\/em>, and <em>context-imperial<\/em> testing.<\/h3>\n<p>To say &#8220;context-driven&#8221; is to distinguish our approach to testing from context-oblivious, context-specific, or context-imperial approaches:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Context-oblivious testing is done without a thought for the match between testing practices and testing problems. This is common among testers who are just learning the craft, or are merely copying what they&#8217;ve seen other testers do.<\/li>\n<li>Context-specific testing applies an approach that is optimized for a specific setting or problem, without room for adjustment in the event that the context changes. This is common in organizations with longstanding projects and teams, wherein the testers may not have worked in more than one organization. For example, one test group might develop expertise with military software, another group with games. In the specific situation, a context-specific tester and a context-driven tester might test their software in exactly the same way. However, the context-specific tester knows only how to work within her or his one development context (MilSpec) (or games), and s\/he is not aware of the degree to which skilled testing will be different across contexts.<\/li>\n<li>Context-imperial testing insists on changing the project or the business in order to fit the testers&#8217; own standardized concept of &#8220;best&#8221; or &#8220;professional&#8221; practice, instead of designing or adapting practices to fit the project. The context-imperial approach is common among consultants who know testing primarily from reading books, or whose practical experience was context-specific, or who are trying to appeal to a market that believes its approach to development is the one true way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Contrasting <em>context-driven<\/em> with <em>agile <\/em>testing.<\/h3>\n<p>Agile development models advocate for a customer-responsive, waste-minimizing, humanistic approach to software development and so does context-driven testing. However, context-driven testing is not inherently part of the Agile development movement.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>For example, Agile development generally advocates for extensive use of unit tests. Context-driven testers will modify how they test if they know that unit testing was done well. Many (probably most) context-driven testers will recommend unit testing as a way to make later system testing much more efficient. However, if the development team doesn&#8217;t create reusable test suites, the context-driven tester will suggest testing approaches that don&#8217;t expect or rely on successful unit tests.<\/li>\n<li>Similarly, Agile developers often recommend an evolutionary or spiral life cycle model with minimal documentation that is developed as needed. Many (perhaps most) context-driven testers would be particularly comfortable working within this life cycle, but it is no less context-driven to create extensively-documented tests within a waterfall project that creates big documentation up front.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ultimately, context-driven testing is about doing the best we can with what we get. There might not be such a thing as Agile Testing (in the sense used by the agile development community) in the absence of effective unit testing, but there can certainly be context-driven testing.<\/p>\n<h3>Contrasting <em>context-driven<\/em> with <em>standards-driven<\/em> testing.<\/h3>\n<p>Some testers advocate favored life-cycle models, favored organizational models, or favored artifacts. Consider for example, the V-model, the mutually suspicious separation between programming and testing groups, and the demand that all code delivered to testers come with detailed specifications.<\/p>\n<p>Context-driven testing has no room for this advocacy. Testers get what they get, and skilled context-driven testers must know how to cope with what comes their way. Of course, we can and should explain tradeoffs to people, make it clear what makes us more efficient and more effective, but ultimately, we see testing as a service to stakeholders who make the broader project management decisions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yes, <em>of course<\/em>, some demands are unreasonable and we should refuse them, such as demands that the tester falsify records, make false claims about the product or the testing, or work unreasonable hours. But this doesn&#8217;t mean that every stakeholder request is unreasonable, even some that we don&#8217;t like.<\/li>\n<li>And yes, <em>of course<\/em>, some demands are absurd because they call for the impossible, such as assessing conformance of a product with contractually-specified characteristics without access to the contract or its specifications. But this doesn&#8217;t mean that every stakeholder request that we don&#8217;t like is absurd, or impossible.<\/li>\n<li>And yes, <em>of course<\/em>, if our task is to assess conformance of the product with its specification, we need a specification. But that doesn&#8217;t mean we always need specifications or that it is always appropriate (or even usually appropriate) for us to insist on receiving them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are always constraints. Some of them are practical, others ethical. But within those constraints, we start from the project&#8217;s needs, not from our process preferences.<\/p>\n<h3>Context-driven techniques?<\/h3>\n<p>Context-driven testing is an approach, not a technique. Our task is to do the best testing we can under the circumstances&#8211;the more techniques we know, the more options we have available when considering how to cope with a new situation.<\/p>\n<p>The set of techniques&#8211;or better put, the body of knowledge&#8211;that we need is not just a testing set. In this, we follow in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dorsethouse.com\/books\/perf.html\">Gerry Weinberg&#8217;s footsteps<\/a>:\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Start to finish, we see a software development project as a creative, complex human activity. To know how to serve the project well, <a href=\"HTTP:\/\/www.testingeducation.org\/BBST\/videos\/CopyrightInterestAnalysis.wmv\">we have to understand the project, its stakeholders, and their interests.<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/kaner.com\/pdfs\/KanerSocialScienceSTEP.pdf\">Many of our core skills come from psychology, economics, ethnography, and the other socials sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Closing notes<\/h3>\n<p>Reasonable people can advocate for standards-driven testing. Or for the idea that testing activities should be routinized to the extent that they can be delegated to less expensive and less skilled people who apply the routine directions. Or for the idea that the biggest return on investment today lies in improving those testing practices intimately tied to writing the code. These are all widely espoused views. However, even if their proponents emphasize the need to tailor these views to the specific situation, these views reflect fundamentally different starting points from context-driven testing.<\/p>\n<p>Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D.<br \/>\nJames Bach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James, Bret and I published our definition of context-driven testing at http:\/\/www.context-driven-testing.com\/.<\/p>\n<p>Some people have found the definition too complex and have tried to simplify it, attempting to equate the approach with Agile development or Agile  testing, or with the exploratory style of software testing. Here&#8217;s another crack at a definition:<\/p>\n<p>    Context-driven testers choose their testing objectives, techniques, and deliverables (including test documentation) by looking first to the details of the specific situation, including the desires of the stakeholders who commissioned the testing. The essence of context-driven testing is project-appropriate application of skill and judgment. The Context-Driven School of testing places this approach to testing within a humanistic social and ethical framework.<\/p>\n<p>    Ultimately, context-driven testing is about doing the best we can with what we get. Rather than trying to apply &#8220;best practices,&#8221; we accept that very different practices (even different definitions of common testing terms) will work best under different circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-certification","category-standards","category-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343,"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}