Rapid testing, risk catalogues and checklists – Windows testing ideas

Many moons ago, when I was a young tester, I worked on the first third party game for Microsoft (Please don’t look for it, it’s terrible). But there was some good to come out of the experience. Windows ’95 was new shiny, and fraught with danger. To help address some of this, I began collecting test ideas and describing the expected behaviour of ‘good’ Windows applications.

Much of the older documents we created were designed to support an approach that was mostly exploratory. Exploratory testing was supported by coverage models that provided loose charters, and the feedback on tester sessions was verbal.

For the more prescriptive parts of our test effort, documents such as this provided support. Bug catalogues, risk catalogues and checklists were used extensively to ensure that important things were not left untested.

So enjoy the first of these checklists, my Windows ’95 testing cheat sheet. For anyone testing a Windows game or application, much of this still applies. If you’re testing web applications, this may give you some ideas for how your application should handle events for user-interface controls.

You can find the checklist at http://www.quinert.com/documents/Win95AcceptanceChecklist.pdf.