This article is inspired by the following post on The Club: Share a test idea in 5 words or less.
The software testing community are a smart bunch of people with plenty of experience and ideas. We gathered several software testing test ideas to spark tests for regression testing, API testing, exploratory testing, mobile app testing, data migration testing, release testing, your next bug bash and more!
How to use:
- Scroll up and down, stop at a random spot on the page
- Select a random tester to become that tester (some testers have offered more than one idea 😎)
- Look at the test idea heuristic
- Apply it to your next testing session
😮 BONUS: Combine more than one idea.
🤝 DOUBLE BONUS: Connect with and thank the person behind the test idea. Let them know how it helped.
🎖️ TRIPLE BONUS: Share your success story on The Club.
Prefer using a spreadsheet? View the Software Testing Test Ideas Hive Mind (STTIHM) on Sheets.
⭐️ One Hit Wonders
- Have no mercy — Flavia-Karina Anca
- Follow the data — Geir Gulbrandsen
- Is this thing on? — Soren Aasbjerg Andersen
- Manipulate time — Sami Söderblom
- What if I do this! — Srinath Chandrashekhar
- Let's turn this on — Grzegorz Niczyporuk
- Trust your intuition — Fred Steenbeergen
- Navigate randomly — Aleksis Tulonen
- It is not the network. — Sean McGartland
- What if I spam this? — Christopher Sterling
- What could go worng — Kate Paulk
- If it works don't touch — Nand
- Does it scale for one? — James Pulley
- Keep end user in mind — Nivedhitha Shivakumar
- It’s not us versus them — Melissa Tondi
- Team up with the devs — James Elliott
- Exploratory test design — Xander Bartels
- Get your partner to test — Frederick Vandenbosch
- It works on my machine — Michael Dilley
- Tap, tap, taaapty, tap tap — Andrew Kelly
- Nothing is what it seems — Ard Kramer
- Big, small, lots, few, none — João Farias
- Verify software's caffeine — Ansha Batra
- Play dumb, bug shows up — Sebastian Clavijo Suero
- Behave as impatient user — Monika Dhakla
- Don't play the quality card! — Graham Bennett
- I wonder what happens if… — Bryan Jones
- Check if button is clickable — Rakshitha TM
- Perform unexpected action — Sam White
- What would cause an error? — Ben Oconis
- Test cost effective, use brain — Anders Wallin
- Compare expected vs Actual — Abhishek Kumar Roy
- Test critical functionality first — Jordan McCollough
- Keep things simple while test — Veera
- Double click just like grandpa — Sam Smith
- See and Test the functionality — Rishabh sharma
- Tests should be good enough — Mohamed Moadeb
- Hammer it! See what happens — Alexander W
- Cat walks across the keyboard — Jules Robinson
- Imagine you are someone else — Damian Synadinos
- Raise that bug when you doubt — Sandhya Chakravarthy
- What do the requirements say? — Conrad Braam
- Myth 001: Zero Production Defects — Gunesh P
- Change the Expectations vs Reality — Anjali Thakur
- Clean code principles in automation — Benjamin Bischoff
- Boundary testing for input validation — Khatera Safy
- Test Positive and Negative Scenarios — Sandeep Kaur
- Explore and Question your application — James Readhead
- Testing in production is ok (sometimes) — David Leslie
- Accessibility comes before anything else — Andrew Burnip
- Monkey, monkey, bugs, bananas! Monkey — Jiri Novacek
⭐️ Sebastian Stautz
- Use it
- Use big data
- Error handling
- Use different data
- Can someone die?
- What is the budget?
- Break the connection
- Try it more than once
- Compare old with new
- Try some combinations
- What do the users need?
- What if we delay X days?
- What is the release date?
- Remove rights and/or roles
- Will customers pay for this?
- How can this hurt someone?
- How many resources needs it?
- Call Delete API, check database
- What would [adjective] users do?
- [new, experienced, bored, hacky, happy, sad, stressed, stressing]
⭐️ Ben Dowen
- Zoom in, out, all about
- What if you ship today?
- Look closer, much closer
- Pair with domain experts
- Match user actions to logs
- Experience as a user would
- How close to good enough?
- Journey, there and back again
- When, time, date, timezone, leaps
- Click everything twice, observe database
⭐️ Simon Tomes
- Turn off and on again
- Goldilocks goes to test town
- Explore profile page with CRUD
- happen will what backwards go?
- User Would Never Do That (UWNDT)
- Could Roles Impact Behaviour (CRIB)
- Imagine Trending On Social Media (ITOSM)
- Which Developer Can You Celebrate (WDCYC)
⭐️ Søren Harder
- Does it work?
- Also remove one step
- What will you often do?
- What do they care about?
- What have they forgotten?
- What have they forgotten?
- How could this kill someone?
- Add one step to the requirements
⭐️ Caleb Crandall
- Push the red button
- Look to left and right
- Do most obviously wrong thing
- Delete default values and proceed
⭐️ Han Lim
- Read the log
- Use a screen reader
- Check laws and policies
- What would harm minorities?
⭐️ Nicola Lindgren
- Inspect the elements
- Use only the keyboard
- Test mobile with one hand
⭐️ Rebecca Davis
- How did it work before?
- What did the dev’s forget?
- Do the steps make sense?
⭐️ Konstantin Sakhchinskiy
- Performance/Load fuzzing testing
- Do not overengineer and/or overtest
- State machine stress fuzzing testing
⭐️ Anna Bommas
- Send/Save the empty form
- Do the opposite of requirements
⭐️ Kristof Van Kriekingen
- Click it, I dare you
- Think outside of the box
⭐️ Piotr Wicherski
- Don't test only clean devices
- Don't test only ideal environments
Sources: The Club, LinkedIn, X.
Last reviewed and updated on 02/04/2024. Next review date: 01/05/2024.
Add your ideas to this thread and we'll consider them at the next review date.
Need to spark even more test ideas? Try the Test Heuristics Cheat Sheet.
