How was this tested?

This is a great question that you can use to help your team members think about describing the testing that they perform. For test evidence, I encourage my team members to do what works best for them. If I ask them the question in a few weeks time, “How was this tested?” Can you remember what you tested? Have you got enough “evidence” to tell me what you did? There have been times in my early career where later on I look back at my notes and they were so rubbish that I could not remember what I had done clearly. Since then I have learnt to find the ‘just enough’ approach and a way that suits me.

Feature Map

There are lots of ideas about how you can record your testing. In my personal view, we all work differently, so it’s up to you. I’ve used all sorts of things. One example I can give is a Feature Map that you can find in a previous blog post. https://fishouthebox.medium.com/stop-writing-step-by-step-test-cases-e68026aa844e I have used this method in the past when I’m learning about a new product and want to increase my knowledge or have tight timelines for testing.

Testing Notes

Other times I record things by writing notes! I split them into — what’s going well, , bugs/issues, questions and improvement suggestions. I have used this when I’ve been exploring an application and need to provide quick feedback.

Session Based Testing

Another idea could be to use Session based Test Management. I personally have not used this, however, I recently shared the idea with two team members and they went away creating their own template and plan on trialling the usage. It really brings me so much joy when I see others thinking for themselves, trying new things and experimenting to see what works or what doesn’t. If you’d like to see the PDF I sent them, then go to this link https://www.satisfice.com/download/session-based-test-management

So how do you record your Test evidence? How do you like to work? What experiments could you perform to create test evidence that is useful and memorable?