Heuristics for creating complex test scenarios?

Question

What are some heuristics to generate test scenarios to test a web application.

I don't understand how test scenarios are different from test cases or how to use heuristics to generate them.

Answer 1

Here's how I look at test scenarios and test cases.

• Test Case - small, self-contained, tests precisely one thing (the thing can be a system action such as "log on with correct credentials" and may or may not have a number of implicit requirements, prerequisites, or steps)
• Test Scenario - sequence of related test cases performing an end-to-end test of a system function. An example using the log on test case above could be:
  • Log on with correct credentials (user has sysadmin rights)
  • Go to user management module (implicit requirement: this test case will fail if the sysadmin rights are not applied to the user)
  • Add new user X with predefined user profile Y (implicit requirements: the profile for the new user has been defined as part of system setup)
  • Log off.
  • Log on as user X.
  • Verify the list of available modules matches the expect list of available modules.
  • Log off.

My heuristics for generating test scenarios are pretty basic: I look at user patterns, common end-to-end tasks, and so forth. From that and the possible configuration options, I can generate an endless list of potential test scenarios.

Some examples of the heuristics I use:

• Common tasks for each available privilege level
• Common tasks for each common configuration set
• Reported bug clusters
• Implicit requirements/prerequisites (i.e. in order to do X, I need to have done Y)
• User patterns (e.g. power users work almost entirely through keyboard shortcuts, so generate scenarios where all the navigation and functionality is triggered by keyboard shortcuts)

I don't need anything more complex than this because these kinds of heuristics will generate complex scenarios once I start using different combinations of possible options.