Test Design with Mind Maps

Today's tip is two-fold.

As a first part, it's a great example of a rapid test design practice with XMind mind mapping tool, provided as experience report by Darren McMillan.

• Mind mapping
  
  
  
  • Increases creativity
  
  
  • Reduces test case creation time
  
  
  • Increases visibility of the bigger picture
  
  
  • Very flexible to changing requirements
  
  
  • Can highlight areas of concern (or be marked for a follow up to any questions).
  
  
  
  


• Grouping conditions into types of testing
  
  
  
  • Generate much better test conditions
  
  
  • Provides more coverage
  
  
  • Using templates of testing types makes you at least consider that type of testing, when writing conditions.
  
  
  • When re-run these often result in new conditions being added & defects found due to the increased awareness
  
  
  
  


• Lean test cases
  
  
  
  • Easy to dump from the map into a test management tool
  
  
  • If available the folder hierarchy can become your steps
  
  
  • Blend in easily with exploratory testing.  Prevents a script monkey mentality.
  
  
  
  


• Much lower cost to generate and maintain, whilst yielding better results.

As a second part, I link you back to 2006, to the article "X Marks the Test Case: Using Mind Maps for Software Design" by Rob Sabourin.

• Mind Maps to Help Define Equivalence Classes
  
  
  
  • Identify the variables
  
  
  • Identify classes based on application logic, input, and memory (AIM)
  
  
  • Identify invalid classes
  
  
  
  


• Mind Maps to Identify Usage Scenarios


• Mind Maps to Identify Quality Factors