Transition Testing

There are several ways to "pass" or "fail" a test -- it's not a simple matter. Here's why.

“Computer, what happened?” by Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek

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"For a tester, success means finding bugs".

The metric for the volume of a tester's work is the number of (new or existing) applications, dialogs, features, files, etc. tested .

When a lot of bugs are found, it is difficult to tell whether we have a good tester or a lousy developer.

So the metric for the effectiveness of a tester's work is the number of defects in the product after tester sign-off and shipment.

The anticipated or "acceptable" level of bugs depends upon the needs and expectations of an organization's customers.

This logic table present at least seven (7) possible outcomes from a "simple" test.

For example, Outcome # 2 is when the expected error was triggered, but the text of that message is different than what was expected from the application's response to test conditions.

Response	Expectation	Confirmation	Outcome #
Error Message	Error Expected ("I meant to do that!")	Error Text is same as expected	1 PASS
	"	Error Text is not what's expected	2 FAIL
	Error Not Expected (False Negative result)	n/a	3 FAIL
Target screen (Viable)	Viability Expected	Text identifying screen is same as expected	4 PASS
	"	Text identifying screen is not what's expected	5 FAIL
	Viability Not Expected (False Positive result)	n/a	6 FAIL
Another Screen	Not expected	n/a	7 FAIL

If you do not detect all these possible outcomes in your test script, you risk acting on the wrong screen and not detecting application bugs.

The logic table above can be applied to various levels of testing:

Level of Testing	Viability from ...	Confirmation (of correctness and completeness)
Enterprise	Files and messages among servers	received and processed end-to-end?
Operating System	Boot-up to desktop	Registry and system files corrupted?
Application Initiation	Internal conditions established	Version Text on Welcome screen
Dialog	Expected Screen appears	Title identifying expected screen
Transition	Mouse action or keypress results in expected changes	Text or graphics identifying condition of system
Transaction or Query	Expected data added, changed, or removed	All columns from all rows transformed? Nothing else extra changed?
Logical Path	Breakpoints in program	Status of variable values
Field (Element)	Expected data appears	Data Transferred from storage?