Taking Testing Seriously

APPENDIX ARoadmap of Testing

This diagram represents a narrative model of testing as we think about it in the Rapid Software Testing methodology. What we mean by a narrative model is a verbal description that has been put into a graphical form to show how the various elements affect each other.

This is a tool for explaining testing (what we call “test framing” in Chapter 5) and placing all the elements of testing into a business context. As an example, consider coverage, which is at the very bottom. What's the point of coverage, according to this model? Here is the answer in the form of a long sentence that traces from the bottom of the diagram to the top: “Coverage is the part of the product you examine and manipulate in a test, in accordance with your test procedure, which governs the performing of experiments that produce test results that become part of the testing story that you report, which is part of an activity governed by your test strategy, which fulfills the mission of testing in the service of the people who matter, all of whom and all of which exist in some context into which you must fit your testing.”

Hence, this diagram is saying that testing without coverage is purely hypothetical, while coverage without the rest of testing tells the business nothing about risk.