Overview of Testing - Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Software Development Life Cycle - page 3

3.
4.

Critical thinking: the ability to evaluate ideas and make inferences
Practical thinking: the ability to put ideas into practice

An example of these kinds of thinking is found in a fable called “The King's Challenge.”

The King's Challenge (a fable)
Once upon a time, a mighty king wanted to determine which of his three court wizards
was the most powerful.
So he put the three court wizards in the castle dungeon and declared whoever escaped
from his respective dungeon cell first was the most powerful wizard in all the kingdom.
(Before reading on, decide what you would do.)

The first wizard immediately started chanting mystical poems to open his cell door.
The second wizard immediately started casting small polished stones and bits of
bone on the floor to learn how he might open his cell door.
The third wizard sat down across from his cell door and thought about the situation
for a minute. Then he got up, walked over to the cell door and pulled on the door
handle. The cell door swung open because it was closed but not locked.
Thus, the third wizard escaped his cell first and became known as the most
powerful wizard in all the kingdom.

What kinds of “tester” thinking did the third wizard exercise in solving the king's puzzle?

• Creative thinking: the ability to see the possibility that the door was not locked

in the fi rst place
Practical thinking: the ability to decide to try the simplest solution fi rst •

1.2.2 Non-Software Testing at the User Level—Buying
a Car

Next, we will use the automobile industry to fi nd non-computer testing examples
that can easily be related to software testing. Have you ever shopped for a car or
helped someone else shop for a car? What shopping step did you perform fi rst ?
One of the most obvious motivations for testing a car is to determine its quality
or functionality before buying one. When you shop for a car, you typically have some
pretty specifi c objectives in mind that relate either to your transportation needs for
work or to your transportation needs for recreation. Either way, you are the person
who will drive the car, you will be the car “user.”
As a user, you are not interested in performing all possible kinds of tests on the
car because you assume (correctly or incorrectly) that the manufacturer has done
some of those tests for you. The important thing to realize is that you do limit your
testing in some way. We will refer to this limited test as a “test drive,” although some
of the testing does not require driving the car per se. To better understand the testing
limits , we will fi rst examine what you do not test. Then, we will examine what you
do test before you buy a car.
The following examples of test drive objectives are typically not those used for
a personal test drive: