We are regularly talking to teams who are just starting out with testing their application. Some of them have a few tests, but don’t know where to go next. Others don’t test at all and need help to get started.
One team mentioned they felt overwhelmed as there is so much they could test. Feeling overwhelmed by the blank page we have in front of us is an experience everyone goes through at some point in their life.
By starting to test your application from top to bottom you can get over this easily.
Start from the top
By testing your application you can always be sure the most important steps users can take in your application work. So why not start with what is most important to your product. Why not start with a few high level scenarios and over time start testing the lower parts of your system.
As easy as this sounds we’ve seen teams struggle with coming to that conclusion and then following through.
You should start by defining what the most important steps in your product are. We’ve come up with a little exercise to help with that.
Get everyone in your team to write down 8 scenarios they think are the most important ones in your application. Do it separately and order them according to how important each step is to everyone of you.
All of them should be structured with Given, When and Then steps.
The process of defining the scenarios is based on Behavior driven development which is supported by various testing tools. For example
Given: I am on the landing page
When: I click on Signup
And: I enter my Email Address and Password
Then: I should be logged in and see the welcome page
And: I should receive a welcome email
Another example would be
Given: I am on the detail page of a product
When: I click buy And: I log into my account
And: I enter my payment details
Then: I will be shown an overview of my purchase
And: I can finish the purchase
And one more
Given: I am on my profile page
When: I am searching for a person
And: I send them a friendship request
Then: The person will receive a message
After everyone is finished discuss the scenarios everyone came up with and rank them according to how important they were to all of you. Now write tests from top to bottom for the scenarios on the list.
You now have tests written for the most important steps users take through your application. Next time you implement something new you can easily make sure you do not destroy the essential parts of your product.
The next time you build a new feature just add the tests immediately.
Over time you can start going from testing your high level scenarios to more lower level testing.
Our blogpost about Casperjs shows you how to implement your first high level tests. Tools like Cucumber for ruby, Lettuce for python or Selenium are great tools to get started as well.
This should only be the beginning of testing your application. But getting started is often the hardest part.
Conclusions
Testing is not just about making sure your application works, but giving you the confidence to change any part of your system. When you can refactor your code or implement a new feature and still be sure that everything works you can work much faster.
Having a strong security net in place lets you take more risks and try more interesting paths. And those paths are often the ones that make your product great.
We will expand this into a series of blog posts about how to get started with testing. Please leave a comment on what you would like to read as the next topic and check out Codeship!
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