RAPID SOFTWARE TESTING (RST), authored by James Bach, is an advocate of exploratory testing to build an understanding of the product, its users and the risks. Other testing methodologies focus on creating test artifacts based upon features, in contrast with RST, it’s light on paperwork and rapid as it encourages focus on product stewardship and a de-emphasis on artifact collection and reporting counts…

Which release meeting call do you want to be in on?

Review Meeting One

We ran a total of 2000 test case, 1900 passed and 100 failed. This graph shows the rate of test progress. We should think about pausing the release until we have these tests passing.

Review Meeting Two

We have one area of concern for this week’s release. On our user story for Customer Referral Discounts, maximum discount should continue to 15% with 5+ referrals but currently stops at 10%. This appears to be due to the time lag on the referral batch processing. Impact is increased support tickets, manual refunds and basket abandonment. However, only 1% of customers currently have 5+ referrals. The Defect Report has been emailed.

Clearly, the second scenario allow a useful discussion around impact, risk, mitigation and allows informed decision making. This in essence is what RST seeks to address; managers like metrics, but always have the story with the numbers and never numbers without the story.

RST is a not prescriptive methodology, more a soft systems approach to software testing. It’s a holistic philosophy giving consideration to mission, product, relationships, user environment and deliverables. In terms of tooling, it largely relies on mind maps in preference to time consuming, traditional documentation.

This fits well with Agile, as a approach which embrace change, fast test cycles and clear communication. In some cases, such as health, military and safety-critical applications, this lean documentation would be unsatisfactory on it’s own. However, even here it could play a valuable supporting role, as a birds-eye view, a lightweight and easily absorbed communication tool.

In conclusion, RST provides many useful techniques in any tester toolkit.

Article by Chris Ryan