The Progressive Test Method
The typical product upgrade involves the following steps:
Workshops are carried out in order to define features to be implemented. During these workshops, tests and acceptance criteria for the new products are defined;- The upgrade is implemented and deployed for testing;
- Testers spend hours playing countless cycles in order to make sure that the product works as desired, and eventually validate it against acceptance criteria. Most of the work is performed manually: edit boxes are filled in, options are selected, buttons are clicked thousands of times, almost automatically, but still by testers.
Regardless of how enthusiastic testers are at the start, after a few thousand cycles they become tired and bored, which means losing efficiency and making mistakes. It will inevitably affect the upgrade’s overall quality.
With PTM, all of these repeated tasks can be easily automated. Furthermore, PTM works in the same way as a human operator: opening forms, filling in edit boxes, selecting options and clicking buttons. Despite hours of testing, PTM operates with the same, well defined accuracy. It will not get tired or bored.
Three Steps of the Progressive Test Method:
- During workshops, test flows are defined. They contain input and result acceptance criteria;
- Numerous tests are performed on a copy of the production system – results are verified against acceptance criteria in order to highlight the differences;
- After the tests, a summary is generated. This comprises overall statistics as well as detailed information on the errors encountered.
