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I don’t know much about Mind maps but I’ve seen expert testers (James Bach and Michael Bolton) use them to plan out their test strategy – usually in a demonstration. It seems like a plausible way to build test cases or outline a test strategy since a picture can be easier to understand. Has anyone used Mind Maps this way or found value in them for testing?

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Read MindMapping 101 from Darren McMillan - http://www.bettertesting.co.uk/content/?p=956

and this discussion ( prompted by myself ) on the STC - http://www.softwaretestingclub.com/forum/topics/im-the-map-im-the-map-im-the

They are nothing new, use of them seems to come in waves - as your question demonstrates :)

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  • I've seen the first reference but it's interesting to know interest comes and gos. May 22, 2012 at 22:55
  • See this post from Testing Reflections, 2004 - testingreflections.com/node/view/421 - and I could dig up earlier references but using this to illustrate the wavy nature :) May 22, 2012 at 23:17
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I wrote this recently - http://rosiesherry.com/2012/05/mindmaps-testing-pinterest/

My theory is that we can learn from other people's mindmaps and it would be useful to have a bunch in one place - I've used Pinterest for this because it is easy and visual, am sure there are other ways.

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  • Do you use mindmaps yourself? Have you found them valuable? May 24, 2012 at 16:56
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Yes, my team has been using Mind Maps to write and run our test cases for over a year now with much success. My team like to use them as you can visually see what has been tested, and not been tested. I've blogged about it some as well. http://testerstrek.blogspot.ca/

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Mind maps are great for test plan design. But I don't see the point in tracking results in that mind maps. You can easily convert a mind map tree to test cases.

So start with a mind map, convert it to regular test cases and execute that test cases.

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  • Hi Andreas, and welcome to SQA Stack Exchange. On the face of it, your answer doesn't seem to add anything to the answers already here, including the one that was accepted. Could you possibly edit it to give more information about how you would use a mind map? "Convert it to regular test cases and execute them" is a little sparse :)
    – Kate Paulk
    Jun 25, 2013 at 17:48
  • I just wanted to point out that mind maps are not really different then test plans, they are convertable. But designing a test case tree in a mind map is way more productive. I prefer Freemind, which I can easily import in my test management tool Quality Spy Jul 18, 2013 at 20:15
  • That is certainly a good point. The mind map structure is great for figuring out where your testing needs to go, but not so good for tracking results.
    – Kate Paulk
    Jul 19, 2013 at 11:27
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I personally use mind-maps for any activity and one of the activity is creating test coverage mindmaps, test strategy mindmaps that I share with my team members and customers.

I love the markers which help in tracking my tests if my mindmap if developed as test design reference.

This mindmap repository may be helpful for you and its open source! You can download various testing mindmaps at http://apps.testinsane.com/mindmaps/ This is released under MIT license which means no restrictions at all! Use it however you love to :-)

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