Test Conditions - The Importance

Having spent the last two days analysing user story requirements to write test conditions, has confirmed what I've known for years: Analysing is the most crucial stage of the testing process. After all, we're not called Test Analysts for nothing.

Apart from the obvious risk of missing something whilst ad-hoc testing, the other advantages of writing test conditions are: Requirement issues can be found before development starts (saving costs) and others can help with testing tasks by following your pre-defined tests.

If like me, you work with a team of Developers who commit to delivering something shippable at the end of each sprint, there's always going to be a bottleneck when it comes to testing tasks. One way to ease this, is to allow developers to test. Now some Test Analysts might brake out into a sweat at the very thought of a developer testing, but I don't have a problem with this providing:

- The Developer does not system test their own code
- The person is trustworthy
- The test conditions are written up front

As an old friend of mine used to say: 'you can get a monkey to test, but it takes skill to write quality test conditions'.