Creating Testable Requirements

A project manager strides purposefully into your office. "This disk has the latest and greatest release of our software. Please test it. Today.” You say, "Okay, sure ... what does it do?" The manager stops in his tracks and says, "Uh, the usual stuff..." Sound familiar? We've run into this situation as employees and as consultants. And we've seen testers take the disk, stick it in the drive, and just start testing away. That's testing in the dark. We think there are approaches that are more productive. When we test or manage testers, we plan the testing tasks to know what value we can get from the testing part of the project. Let's try turning on the lights!