In this episode Federico and Matthew talk about test heuristics. Starting with what are they and why they are useful, they give a run down several heuristics that the ASP.NET QA team uses while exploring software.

News

• MVC 2 Released

Test Heuristics

• What is a heuristic?
• Why are they useful?
• How does the ASP.NET QA team uses them?
• Some useful test heuristics
  • Configuration: Change variables related to configuration (of program as well of machine)
  • Interruptions: Log Off, Hibernate, Kill Process.
  • Undermining: Change the state of the program to an invalid state while functions are running.
  • Starvation: Progressively lower resources until product collapses or gracefully degrades.
  • Dog Piling: Get more processes going concurrently.
  • Click Frenzy / Street Fighter: Run through all the keys and click everywhere.
  • Multi User: Simultaneous users performing actions on shared resources.
  • Multi Instance: Run multiple instances of the application.
  • Flood: Multiple simultaneous transactions or requests flooding the queue.
  • Dependencies: Identify "has a" relationships and apply CRUD to each.
  • Constraints: Violate every constraint.
  • Input Methods: Typing, copy/pate, cut/paste, drag/drop
  • Sequences: Vary order of operations, undo/redo.
  • Position: Begin, middle, end
  • Boundaries: Approaching the boundary, at the boundary
  • Selection/Count: Some, None, All.
• Resources: Most of our heuristics were collected from others across the web. Including, but not limited to James Bach, Michael Bolton and Cem Kaner.