{"id":34,"date":"2006-08-14T18:07:01","date_gmt":"2006-08-14T18:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quinert.com\/stblog\/?p=34"},"modified":"2006-08-14T18:07:01","modified_gmt":"2006-08-14T18:07:01","slug":"rolling-your-own-methodology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/2006\/08\/14\/rolling-your-own-methodology\/","title":{"rendered":"Rolling your own methodology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I came across someone asking for an answer to the old &#8220;How do you test a stapler&#8221; question, and in light of my new role, I thought this was a good opportunity to start taking up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.satisfice.com\/blog\/archives\/50\">James Bach&#8217;s methodology challenge<\/a>, using the stapler example as a starting point.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m starting with the meta-questions, those which I need to answer *before* I can begin to think about what and how I&#8217;m going to test it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Who is the stapler for? Who is it *not* for?<\/li>\n<li>Why do they want a stapler?<\/li>\n<li>How might the different stapler users know that the stapler has fulfilled their needs? What stapler features are unimportant?<\/li>\n<li>When does it need to be tested by? What will happen if it&#8217;s not done by then?<\/li>\n<li>How much can I spend to test the stapler?<\/li>\n<li>Who else can help me test the stapler?<\/li>\n<li>Does it need to be tested by anyone else before it can be considered &#8216;ready&#8217;?<\/li>\n<li>Does anyone else need to check the stapler, or approve my work before the stapler can be used by the person who wants the stapler?<\/li>\n<li>Is there anyone who doesn&#8217;t want the stapler to be had?<\/li>\n<li>What tools am I allowed to use to test the stapler? What tools do I know how to use that might help?<\/li>\n<li>Who might need to test the stapler at a later date? Who is going to read my tests? What documents do I need to create? Where do they need to live?<\/li>\n<li>Who shouldn&#8217;t be able to use the stapler?<\/li>\n<li>How critical is the success of the stapler? What might happen if it isn&#8217;t tested adequately, or fails to meet the needs of the stakeholders?<\/li>\n<li>Are there any standards our testing needs to comply with?<\/li>\n<li>Are there any legal constraints?<\/li>\n<li>What kind of staples does it need to work with?<\/li>\n<li>What kind of materials should it be able to staple?<\/li>\n<li>Does it need to work in conjunction with anything else?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure I will continue to add to this list and organize it, but it&#8217;s a start.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also found I need to develop a checklist to hit the ground running and ensure that I look far enough forward when my involvement with a project begins. For this, I&#8217;m grouping some questions under the heading &#8220;Start from the end&#8221;. This is a subset of the above questions, but are the questions I think I&#8217;m most likely to leave until too late if left to my own devices.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What does success look like?<\/li>\n<li>What are the release processes\/signoffs? Who are the stakeholders who need to sign off?<\/li>\n<li>When does it need to ship by? What is depending on it being released on that date? What else does our product depend on?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And so, it begins. If only I&#8217;d started earlier!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came across someone asking for an answer to the old &#8220;How do you test a stapler&#8221; question, and in light of my new role, I thought this was a good opportunity to start taking up James Bach&#8217;s methodology challenge, using the stapler example as a starting point. I&#8217;m starting with the meta-questions, those which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,22,30,32],"tags":[44,133],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis-skills","category-modelling-skills","category-software-testing","category-systems-thinking","tag-analysis","tag-software-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}