Cheat sheet
Test design techniques
The named techniques interviewers expect, each with a one-line example.
Black-box techniques
- Equivalence partitioning
- Group inputs that behave the same and test one from each group. Age 18 to 60 valid; below and above invalid.
- Boundary value analysis
- Test at and around edges: 17, 18, 19 and 59, 60, 61.
- Decision table
- Combinations of conditions mapped to outcomes; good for business rules like discounts.
- State transition
- States, events and which moves are allowed; good for login lockout and order status.
- Pairwise
- Cover every pair of parameter values with far fewer cases than all combinations.
Experience-based
- Exploratory
- Time-boxed with a charter, notes kept as you go.
- Error guessing
- Use past defects and common failure points as prompts.
Vocabulary
- Severity vs priority
- Impact of the defect vs how soon to fix it. A typo on the homepage can be low severity, high priority.
- Smoke vs sanity vs regression
- Is the build alive; is this fix right; did anything else break.
- Test pyramid
- Many unit tests, fewer service tests, few end-to-end tests.