What is more important:
- Knowing and understanding the application you’re testing
Or
- Being able to visualise how you are going to approach the testing
I suspect the answer is it depends.
From my experience, both are required for good testing. Knowing the application, its ins and outs and having the domain knowledge should help test design. Or, from the opposite point of view, not knowing how the application works will mean you won’t know anything about (any) coverage so you’re likely to miss out on bugs.
Being able to visualise your plan of attack means you know what you’re going to test, what areas of the application will be tested and which areas you can ignore (at least for the time being). This provides a structure that you can work in. Not having this can either make the testing daunting or allow the testing to go off on tangents.
This is why I like Session Based Test Management. SBTM provides enough structure and a plan to guide the testing but still allows flexibility for the tester learns more about the application and/or finds bugs, especially if the tester is new to the application and needs to get to grips with it.
I’ve found Rob Lambert and Darren MacMillan often write about visualising their testing or ideas (using mind maps, drawings, call flows). Here are their blogs to find out more:
