As projects and companies grow, so does their number of test cases and thus the number of duplicate, inconsistent, and irrelevant test cases…
Wim Decoutere began his testing career almost 18 years ago and has since worked at several companies, mostly in the financial sector. He is passionate about teaching and feels at home when standing in front of a classroom. A few years ago, he transitioned to becoming a full-time trainer. He loves to coach and teach about testing, requirements engineering, analysis, soft skills, and any other subject of his interest. As a veteran youth instructor with a passion for learning theories and people management, Wim is constantly seeking new ideas to improve his own performance and that of the entire testing team. In his spare time, Wim is secretary of the BNTQB, coauthor of the ISTQB CTFLv4.0 and CTAL-TA syllabi and chair of the IREB CPRE Foundation Working Group.
As projects and companies grow, so does their number of test cases and thus the number of duplicate, inconsistent, and irrelevant test cases. Every change in the system requires a massive effort from all testing resources to update these test cases, which inevitably leads to more test design debt, if not done accurately. For some companies, this task has become such a burden that they rather take a fresh start, throwing away years and years of work. Where did we go wrong? When did our test design debt grow to a peak that would scare even the most experienced mountaineers? Why didn’t we see this coming? But most important, what can we do about it, without having to start over from scratch? And how can we avoid test design debt in the future? In my talk I will introduce the concept of test design debt and explain several techniques on how to create more lightweight test cases with the same level of detail and coverage as your current test cases. I will elaborate some best practices on how to update your current backlog of manual test cases to increase the maintainability with a minimal amount of effort. Are you curious to know more? Join me to learn more about test case maintainability