When a person suffers from heart attack or stroke, the first one hour is crucial. If we can treat the person in that first hour, there is about 90% chance that the heart or brain reacts positively to the medicines. This is true in testing also. The first one hour of testing can bring out a great insight about the health of the application being tested. To achieve best results, we have to execute the tests in a structured manner. Here is how.
At this point we assume that the test bed is ready and the application is already installed and ready to be tested. We may have 100s or even 1000s of tests documented and reviewed. Before test execution, ask this question on every test case - "If this test fails, is there any point to continue testing?". Mark all those test cases for which you get an answer "No". That means, those are the vital test cases that must necessarily work or pass. Let us take an example of testing a car. To test a car, we may have to do 1000s of tests; but if ignition does not work, if door does not open, if clutch does not work, if brakes do not work, if accelerator or gas pedal does not work, if steering does not work, is it worth saying that as a car? In your software testing, identify those test cases before test execution.
In the first 5 minutes, navigate to all screens in the application. Simply check the loading of forms and the look and feel. End users do care about screens more and more nowadays.
After this, in every form, if there is a provision to add or create new records, perform those. If no data is added, no data can be viewed; hence do add data. Add with valid data. negative data conditions can be done a little later. Ensure all these tests work well. In every screen try to view all existing data. If you see missing data on screen, we have a problem.
Then, execute critical workflows with valid data. One of the flows in a retail banking scenario may be, create an account, perform a few deposit transactions, perform a few withdrawal transactions, view account balance and transfer some amount from checking to savings account. The flow touches a set of screens with connected data. Usually every application will have top-10 workflows or top-20 workflows. Perform those meticulously.
Generate a set of key reports and charts that the management people would view on the application on a daily basis. These are the heartbeats of the application to the customer's management; one wrong data in that, the management will lose the confidence in the product.
If we can pack these in the first 1 hour of testing, we can definitely see whether the application is ready to do what it is supposed to do, i.e. it works for positive data. All other invalid data validations, invalid flow tests. non-core features can be tested after the first hour. We call this as BVT (Build Verification Tests). No failure can happen in BVT. Only when all these tests pass, we ask our testing teams to proceed further. You may still ask a question, brakes in car not working does not mean that the horn may not work. I agree. But, if a critical part or path is not working, there is no point in testing less critical part. So let us not waste time and this will ensure that the build or dev teams to ensure they pay proper attention to the paths of the application according to their importance.
Usually 10-15% of the total tests will fall under BVT category in every application. Attack those first.
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