Friday, November 21, 2008

Kung Fu Testing

“Colloquially, kung fu (or gung fu) alludes to any individual accomplishment or cultivated skill obtained by long and hard work.”1 What in the world does Kung Fu have to do with Software Testing? Last week we had a software release due to our client and it was one of those weeks, if something would or could go wrong, it did. The database became corrupted, the testing lab network became ultra-slow, and connectivity to our client site was intermittent. With all of these challenges we managed to battle through and get the release out on schedule, although with a couple of qualifications. During this crazy fray the lead developer coined our style of testing as “Kung Fu Testing”.

Not giving the phrase much thought at first, I liked it. After more thought I was pondering why would she draw the analogy of our testing style to that of Kung Fu. Was it because we did a good job of dissecting and targeting the critical risk areas to test or perhaps the long hours and dedication toward meeting the delivery date? Was it because out of self defense we effectively adjusted our testing strategy or was it the precision of the weapons selected to accomplish the task at hand?

I conclude that it was a little bit of everything stated above.

Dissection - We carefully chose to execute test cases and test plans in a precise order of risk.

Dedication – We worked into the wee hours of the morning for several nights in a row resurrecting our test environment.

Self Defense - We completed testing of all vital functions. We then executed regression test suites based on efficiency.

Weapons – Our WATIR framework allowed for some minor adjustments to the methods and we could readily execute the system regression tests.

We executed almost 600 test cases in only three days. Typically we allocate 5 days, but several days were needed to resurrect the testing lab. The precision in which the test plans were executed gave us the confidence to deliver the release on schedule. One test plan could not be executed, but we explained the risk in the release notes. After the delivery of the code we were able to execute this test plan further mitigating any risk.

Having recently completed the AST course Black Box Software Testing Foundations, I hope to expand upon this concept of Kung Fu Testing to be oracle and heuristic focused. There is always room for improvement, but accomplishments happen because of cultivating testing skills and hard work.



1 Wikipedia