Good morning/afternoon/evening for everyone !
Today I will talk about one thing that every tester must to know: How do you know when you should stop testing?
Everyone want to test everything, but we know that it is impossible. So, what we can do ? This is some guidelines that you can follow:
Set Time Guidelines
Provide a block of time to perform the initial tests. Then review the test results to determine next testing steps based upon the requirements and what you learned by performing the initial tests. Continue this process until testing has been completed. By going through this process will help train you how to think through the requirements, testing results, risks, identifying new testing ideas, and determining when to stop testing.
Sometimes the initial testing assignments are small enough to be completed in one or two testing sessions. As the assignments become larger it is beneficial to test in a continual feedback mode with a more experience tester.
Experience and Time
It is important to ask questions about what you are testing because this will help you understand
how much time to spend testing.
- Based upon the requirements, I am planning on performing the following tests;
- Based upon what I learned during testing, I am going to perform the following tests and I am not going to perform the following tests.
- As an overview of my testing I performed the following tests and I did not test the following functionality.
Diminishing Returns and Use of time
Spending more time performing additional tests does not necessarily equate to added test value. There becomes a point where sufficient information and value has been gathered through testing and spending additional time testing will not necessary produce more valuable information. Instead, spending this additional testing time on a different testing problem could be a better use of time. When thinking about what is the best use of my testing time, a tester needs to consider time constraints and what testing problems are still outstanding. For example you have to test problem A and B. You have already spent a lot of time testing problem A and have gathered a lot of valuable information. At this point, is it better to spend more time performing additional tests or should I move on to test problem B?
Risk Level of the Testing Issue
The higher the risk typically means you will spend more time testing. However, that needs to be balanced with the scope of the problem. For example, a high risk change that touches many areas of the product will require more testing time than a high risk change that touches a very small, isolated part of the product.
Bye guys !
Rafaela Azevedo 