How much the test design process evolved in last 20 years?

Believe it or not, zero!!! It's only the representation of test cases that changed! 

Testing is all about simulating a user's experience. And test design is all about planning to simulate as many variations of user experiences as possible in a limited time and effort.

In last two decades, the simulation of user experiences evolved to more mature processes over time. It started with record and playback and passed through reusable functions, data-driven frameworks, keyword-driven frameworks etc. The latest entry in this list is codeless automation.

But what had changed in test design? Nothing!!! It is still the same process of testers thinking about various test conditions and documenting, as it was 20 years ago. With the advent of Agile, however, the format of test cases got changed. In present days, we mostly use the given-when-then format test cases that can be easily integrated with the test automation tools.

In early years, the purpose of test case development was to make sure that a stranger, with no knowledge of software testing, should be able to execute the test cases and find defects. Later Agile brought a tester's role much closer to the role of a Business Analyst or a developer. But did that make the test design process capable of finding more defects?

The question is, instead of focusing more on 'how', shouldn't we address the 'what' part of the problem first? Visit www.testingalgorithms.com for similar posts.