Quality Assurance (QA) in the development of software confirms the developed software has no bugs and is working as intended, providing a good user experience. A tester finds out how people are using the application and what kind of problems are being faced.
A test scenario is a set of manual or automated test cases that helps determine the positive and negative project characteristics. It provides details of what needs to be tested by QA.
The main objective of a test scenario is to check the performance from the user’s point of view. It gives them a clear idea of the actual scenarios the software will have to deal with after release.
In this article, we will understand test scenarios and how to create them for effective QA.
Understanding Test Scenarios
To understand the test scenario, first, let us know what “scenario” is. In the software development industry, “scenario” is the journey a user follows while engaging with an application or website. The responsibility of a tester is to see user interactions with functionalities and identify potential issues that may arise.
A “test scenario” is a collection of manual or automated test cases to check a project’s positive and negative aspects. These scenarios mirror how end users could employ software applications, allowing developers to validate alignment with client expectations. They offer an overview of testing requirements for a QA company.
A test scenario describes a situation in which the software will be utilized, with an outline of anticipated behavior. This aims to assess how the software applications handle user inputs and respond to varying data types.
Test Case Vs. Test Scenario
The test scenario reflects the situation and functionality that require testing. For example, a test scenario could be “Verify that users can successfully submit an order form.”. In contrast, the test case uses a scenario to describe a set of actions. In simple terms, you can identify “what” and “how” to test in the test case, while the test scenario only tells “what” to test.
Why Is Creating a Detailed Test Scenario Important?
Creating detailed test scenarios is important for quality analysts to ensure the quality of the software. Let’s see why test scenarios are crucial in detail:
- Assessing the actual situation: Test scenarios provide a general view of what needs to be tested. They help QA teams assess the actual situation. By defining scenarios, testers gain insights into the application’s behavior and identify potential issues before they affect end-users.
- Comprehensive test coverage: Test scenarios cover all possible test cases, leaving no aspect untested. This comprehensive approach helps identify potential issues and ensures high-quality software.
- Early bug detection: Well-defined test scenarios help identify defects early in the development cycle. By validating inputs, actions, and expected outcomes, QA teams can catch issues before customers encounter them. This approach improves software quality and reduces post-release issues.
- Stakeholder approval: Test scenarios can be endorsed by various stakeholders (business analysts, developers, and end users). Their approval ensures exhaustive evaluation, validating functionality for prevalent use cases.
- Work effort estimation: Assessing the testing workload through test scenarios helps in resource allocation and efficient project planning.
- Evaluating program functionality holistically: Evaluating software from an end-to-end perspective helps QA professionals understand its complete operation.
Prerequisites for Formulating a Test Scenario
Let’s discuss the prerequisites for creating effective test scenarios:
- Understanding requirements: Creating a test scenario requires a good knowledge of the requirements and a clear understanding of the test objectives. This forms the basis of your test scenarios.
- Set up test environment: Ensure you have access to the relevant test environment. Set up the necessary hardware, software, databases, and network configurations.
- Test data preparation: Collect or create relevant test data. Consider positive and negative test cases, boundary values, and edge cases.
- Functional knowledge: Testers need to understand the business and functional requirements of the application. Since test cases stem from test scenarios, the precision of the scenarios is crucial. An oversight in a test scenario can result in omitted test cases. A single error might result in a substantial loss of cost and time.
- Assessment of risks: Evaluate potential risks associated with the application. Prioritize test scenarios based on risk levels.
- Tool proficiency: Select tools for successfully executing the test scenarios. While there are many tools for validating your test scenarios, LambdaTest, an AI-powered automation testing platform that helps users test their websites on 3000+ combinations of all major browsers and operating systems, also allows you to validate test scenarios across various browsers, helping QA professionals to ensure compatibility across various browsers and devices.
In addition to this, LambdaTest offers free online tools to validate XPath and JSONPath expressions which can help developers and testers in their test process.
Crafting an Effective Test Scenario
Creating a test scenario is an important step in the software testing process. It involves a structured approach to ensure that all user actions are thoroughly tested. By following the steps mentioned below, you can create effective test scenarios that align with the product’s requirements and ensure comprehensive coverage.
1. Identify and Analyze the Software Requirements
Identifying the product requirement to determine the possible user actions is important to know what needs to be tested.
- Study requirement documents: Start by reading the documentation that includes the product’s requirements, including the Business Requirements Specification (BRS), Software Requirements Specification (SRS), and Functional Requirements Specification (FRS).
- Consult supplementary resources: Refer to instruction manuals and relevant books related to your application to gain a deeper understanding of the specific functions that need to be assessed.
- Identify requirements: Identify every requirement listed in these documents to determine the possible user actions that need to be tested.
2. Understand User Actions
Understanding how users will interact with your application helps to craft an effective test scenario.
- Understand user behavior: Think of how end-users might interact with your product post-purchase, drawing insights from the requirement documents.
- Create user activity scenarios: Develop scenarios based on the program’s intended purpose. For example, if your application is an internet search engine, consider scenarios where users access images or search for web articles.
- Consider potential exploits: Evaluate the software from a hacker’s perspective to identify potential vulnerabilities and improve security.
3. Create Test Scenarios
Now, based on the requirements and user actions, you will be able to craft a test scenario.
- Enumerate user actions: Construct scenarios encompassing every user action applicable to your program’s operation. Assign numerical references to these actions for easy tracking.
- Cover all features: Ensure that these scenarios cover every possible feature of the software, including all user flows and business flows involved in the operation of the website or app.
- Revisit requirement documents: During this stage, revisit the requirement documents to ensure that the user actions you’ve outlined are comprehensive and according to the specified requirements.
4. Align Scenarios with Requirements
It is important to visually demonstrate the connection between user actions and the requirements and get it reviewed by a supervisor to create an effective test scenario.
- Traceability matrix: Develop a Traceability Matrix to visually demonstrate the connection between user actions and the requirements. This matrix helps validate that your test scenarios align with the client’s expectations.
- Review and refine: Get the scenarios checked by a supervisor and other stakeholders involved in the project. This ensures that all perspectives are considered and that the test scenarios are thorough.
5. Compile and Document
Compiling your observations into a single document is a good practice to ensure all aspects are covered.
- Centralized documentation: Compile your testing observations into a single document. This document should provide stakeholders with an assessment of your test scenario’s effectiveness, ensuring that all aspects of the software are covered.
Best Practices to Create Test Scenarios
Creating effective test scenarios is crucial to ensuring comprehensive validation of requirements or user stories. Here are the best practices:
- Link to requirements or user stories:
- Ensure every test scenario is linked to at least one requirement or user story, adhering to the project methodology guidelines.
- Create one test scenario per requirement or user story for simplicity and clarity.
- Isolate Requirements:
- Before creating a test scenario that validates multiple requirements simultaneously, ensure each requirement is tested in isolation to avoid missing functions.
- Refrain from generating overly complex test scenarios with multiple requirements.
- Customer Priorities:
- Given the potential abundance of scenarios and the associated cost of execution, prioritize running test scenarios based on customer preferences and priorities.
Test Scenario Example
Let’s create a test scenario with an example of e-commerce website functionality.
Test scenario
Check the Search functionality.
Search example
Ask the following questions in this scenario:
Valid searches:
- Can the user search for a product using a valid product name?
- Can the user search for a product using a valid product category?
- Can the user search for a product using valid keywords related to the product?
Invalid searches:
- What happens when the user enters a random character (e.g., “asrflkjkl”) and searches?
- What happens when the user enters special characters (e.g., “@##$%^&*”) and searches?
- What happens when the user searches with an empty search bar?
Autocomplete functionality:
- Does the autocomplete feature suggest relevant products or categories when typing in the search bar?
- Do the suggestions dynamically change based on the user’s input?
Search results page:
- Are the search results displayed correctly and relevant to the search query?
- Is the number of search results displayed accurately?
- Can the user filter and sort the search results using the available options (e.g., price, popularity, rating)?
No results scenario:
- What happens when no products match the search query?
- Is there a “No results found” message displayed?
- Are there any suggested actions for the user (e.g., try different keywords, check spelling)?
Search performance:
- Does the search function respond quickly and efficiently, without excessive loading times?
Usability and design:
- Is the search bar easily accessible and placed correctly on the website?
- Are the search results page and filters user-friendly to navigate?
By following these questions, QA professionals can ensure comprehensive testing of the search functionality on an e-commerce website.
Wrapping It Up
A well-created QA process is important for providing high-quality software that meets both user expectations and business requirements. Detailed test scenarios play an important role in this process, providing an approach that ensures comprehensive testing of the software. By understanding project requirements, simulating real user interactions, and covering all possible test cases, QA professionals can identify issues early, ensure comprehensive test coverage, and facilitate stakeholder approval.
Detailed test scenarios help with thorough testing, early bug detection, and alignment with user and business needs, ultimately contributing to the delivery of high-quality software and the overall success of your organization.