Scenario testing is a
software testing
Software testing is the act of checking whether software satisfies expectations.
Software testing can provide objective, independent information about the Quality (business), quality of software and the risk of its failure to a User (computin ...
activity that uses
scenarios: hypothetical stories to help the tester work through a complex problem or test system. The ideal scenario test is a credible, complex, compelling or motivating story; the outcome of which is easy to evaluate.
These tests are usually different from
test cases in that test cases are single steps whereas scenarios cover a number of steps.
History
Cem Kaner coined the phrase scenario test by October 2003.
He commented that one of the most difficult aspects of testing was maintaining step-by-step test cases along with their expected results. His paper attempted to find a way to reduce the re-work of complicated written tests and incorporate the ease of
use case
In both software and systems engineering, a use case is a structured description of a system’s behavior as it responds to requests from external actors, aiming to achieve a specific goal. It is used to define and validate functional requireme ...
s.
A few months later, Hans Buwalda wrote about a similar approach he had been using that he called "soap opera testing". Like television soap operas these tests were both exaggerated in activity and condensed in time.
The key to both approaches was to avoid step-by-step testing instructions with expected results and instead replaced them with a narrative that gave freedom to the tester while confining the scope of the test.
Methods
System scenarios
In this method only those sets of realistic, user activities that cover several components in the system are used as scenario tests. Development of system scenario can be done using:
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Story lines
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State transitions
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Business verticals
# Implementation story from customers
Use-case and role-based scenarios
In this method the focus is on how a user uses the system with different roles and environment.
See also
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Test script
*
Test suite
In software development, a test suite, less commonly known as a validation suite, is a collection of test cases that are intended to be used to test a software program to show that it has some specified set of behaviors. A test suite often conta ...
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Session-based testing
References
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Software testing