8/6/2019 How to Gain Technical Depth Into a Product
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How to gain Technical depth into a
product (in case the design
specifications are not available)
It is essential for a tester to know the product, not only the
functionality (sometimes called as
Business logic) but also to understand the implementation
details of various components. I am not
disputing that understanding that functionality is important,
however, it is not sufficient. We need to
understand technicalities too; technicalities as in what are the
various components of the AUT (SUT)
what are the different configurations (platforms) that are
supported, interaction with 3rd
party
systems what is the mechanism, protocols, Etc Knowing all these
parameters will help us in
making the product more robust.
Here are a few Tips and tricks that we can use to understand the
product in a better manner:
1. Understand what is the problem statement for the producta.
This is a very important question, a lot depends on the answer to
this questionb. There may be other use cases for the same product
(Washing machine Punjab
story, remember?)
c. Chart out all the possible use cases to understand the
complete picture2. Understand who is the end user
a. This piece of information would help us in framing the right
kind of test casesb. This would also help us in setting up the
proper test bed
3.
Understand what is the deployment scenarioa. Whether its a
standalone server accepting multiple client requestsb. Whether its
a distributed server various server components on different
machinesc. What is the protocol(s) used to connect server and
client
4. Understand the Log files (look at the example detailed
below)a. Locate the log files of the server (SUT / AUT / DUT)b.
Bump up the log level to TRACE / DEBUG (basically the highest
possible)c. Perform a very basic dataflow flow (execute one test
scenario)d. Identify various components that are listed (mentioned)
in the log filee. Create a map of the dataflow, this method would
provide you with a very detailed
design of the product (be cautious as there might be several
system level calls)
f. Play around with the log levels to vary the extent if details
you need5. Use of reverse engineering of executable / binaries
(look at the example detailed below)
a. There are several products (commercial as well as free) that
de-compile the binariesb. Some de-compilers will re-generate the
entire code for youc. Some of them can used to plot the classes and
methods relationsd. This might be a little tedious, how-ever very
useful when help is not available easily
6. Last but not the least ask for a session from the developera.
Ask the developer to explain the design
