The 1^st day of the Agile Testing Days for me was a full-day tutorial by Alan ‘The Evil Tester’ Richardson about technical testing. The tutorial was very hands on, and we actually tested something — a website.

I liked how we started with the website as such and focused on the relatively simple aspects of getting a user account and logging in. We did some testing and then reflected on what we were doing and how we did it. For example there were various ways of note-taking:

• I mostly used pen & paper, and for some notes a text editor (e.g. when I knew that I would like to make a note of text I would enter more than once)
• Some used their text editor of choice, Evernote or similar tools.

After interacting with the application ‘just’ using the basic browser feature of rendering HTML, we stepped down to a slightly deeper technical level and used ‘developer tools’. These allow interaction with the DOM and, for example, manipulate what an HTML form would submit back to the server — including, but not limited to, selected values of drop down lists. — While not every user will do that, some will. And it’s a good idea to test that your server can candle this unexpected input. We also looked into a number of tools to capture (and again manipulate) network traffic, such as HTTP proxies.

I liked how ‘technical testing’ was presented as something that is different from ‘test automation’. Many of the tools we use for testing enhance our possibilities as testers — and sometimes they also allow for some automation. The main point of technical testing though, is increasing the testers reach into the technical details of the system under test.

This is what I expected from the day and also what was delivered in the tutorial.

Thank you Alan, I liked it a lot!