Pair Testing

 

Today when I was reading something on the internet, I cam across an area called Pair Testing. Being curious, I started reading about it. I found it interesting and I thought of sharing it here.

Pair Testing is a Testing process where two people do testing at the same  computer or  terminal.One person will be handling the computer and the other discusses, reviews various scenarious and cases It involves a tester and a developer\business analyst. It is genrally conducted as a Exploratory\Ad hoc testing . It is very helpful especially when the business requirements are stated poorly or has ambiguities in it.  Pair  Testing is a methodology used in Agile Software Development.  The most interesting fact about this is that it is only 15% slower than the conventional testing method .

The advantages of this testing is as follows:-

1. The domain knowledge of the analyst and the testing skills of the tester go hand in hand. Hence many bugs can be found when compared to the tester and the analyst\developer working alone
2. Testers get to learn about the software application and the business workflows explicitly 
3. The Business Analyst and the developers learn to think in all directions as how a defect can creep into the system, various vulnerabilities,risks etc  Hence this inturn improves the unit testing and the cost of coreecting bugs reduces drastically 
4. The team inturn understands the requirements better 

When pair testing is to be Used ?

1. When the software application\requirement  is to be understood within a short span
2. Can be used to train freshers in testing domain 
3. Sometimes while testing alone, testers find a bug that keep ocurring randomly. With the help of pair testing the developers and the testers can find the pattern of the bug and  can fix these bugs accordingly 

When Pair Testing is not to be Used ?

1. When a structured testing is being done 
2. Automation Testing 

Preparing for Pair Testing

1. Two people should voluntarily form up to do pair testing. They both need to be in the same wavelength and their skills must be complementary to each other 
2.  A work station with adequate seating space for two and an undisturbed environment

When starting for Pair Testing, the objective must be clear although it is more like ad hoc or exploratory testing such as getting requirements clear, understanding the software system, finding patterns in defects etc. These need to be clearly stated for starting the pair testing

While executing the pair testing one must execute the testing and the other must conrol, make note of the behaviour and monitor the system. The users must swap roles periodically.

After finishing pair testing the observations must be recorded, bugs must be raised and taken up accordingly.

In a nut shell, pair testing is an interesting and an effective way of working and one should use this whenever he\she has the opportunity to use it.