Sources of information for testing tend to come from two extremes. In some cases you may have almost no information and find it difficult to start. In other cases you may have far too much information and not know what to do with it all or where to start or stop reading. The ‘happy medium’ or ‘just right’ amount is rarely the case when it comes to testing sources of information.
What do you do in the event of too little information:
- Talk to everyone (all the Stakeholders) in sight and on site and note down everything.
- See if there were earlier projects that might have some bearing on this one.
- Check again; it is rare for a project to be launched on no information at all.
What do you do in the event of too much information:
- Check for any redundancy and concentrate on information that supplies new items.
- Make sure none of it is out-of-date and confirm that with other project personnel.
- Ask what is important to the project – you are not likely the only one suffering from information overload
In general almost any information can help you get a Scope and Out-of-Scope list together and help in the creation of Test Conditions. You have to assign some priorities to the Test Conditions you are creating but that tends to be a lot easier when it is a list rather than an explanatory paragraph. People can concentrate on the specific Test Condition or Objective and decide how important it is to the project.
More information can always be discarded but it is hard (although not impossible) to create something out of nothing. Creating something when nothing exists may prompt a lot of thoughts and also some more due diligence.
Discussion Questions
- Do you have other sources of information?
- How often have you had no information?
- How often have you had too much information?
Next Week: Training
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