Method #1:
Work with whatever little documentation you can
get your hands on. It could be a basic simple backlog (in agile projects), an
email, an older version of the Business Requirements document, or old test
cases, etc.
Investigate, ask around and there is always some
documented trial.
When this does not work out, do not discount your
experience as a software user. For example, your real-life experience dealing
with online shopping experience and banking experience really counts here. I believe
you don’t need someone to tell you how to do online shopping or funds
transferring from one account to another account.
This really helps when you are testing some
shopping or banking application. I do agree that not all situations are going
to be straight forward however some time real life experience does helps.
Method #2:
Use the
older/current version of the application as a reference to test the future
release of a software product. Now, I admit this is in negation to the rule,
“Never write test cases using the application as a reference”. However, when we
are working in a less than perfect situation, we have to mold the rules to fit
our needs.
It helps
to keep the following aspects in perspective when doing so:
- The application might contain bugs- so if after registration the system directly takes you to Screen1 (a certain hypothetical screen for the sake of our example) – Never assume that is the correct behavior. Also if a field takes alphanumeric chars and is a phone number- a question that and make sure you do not take the application as a granted example for expected functionality.
- In the above situations use your judgment and take the help of the application to give you a jump start but be critical of it to question it’s working.
Method #3:
Talk to
the project team members:
- Offer to attend their meetings.
- Ask if you can participate in the unit and integration testing stages.
- If not, ask if the dev team can share their unit and integration test results.
- Arrange for a time for knowledge transfer at a convenient time.
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