MoT Munich

How do you test something that never stops changing?

That's the challenge James Thomas brings to Munich this month. When your product is in constant flux and the state space is effectively infinite, traditional testing approaches start showing their limits fast. James has been thinking hard about this problem, and he's built something to help tackle it: a tool that blends model-based testing, property-based testing, and observability to roam through an application autonomously, making assertions and generating data while he gets on with exploring it himself.

It's a concrete answer to a question every tester knows but rarely gets to dig into properly. Come ready to think.

Followed by an Open Space — bring the questions this talk sparks, or whatever else is on your mind.

Logistics 
🗓 Wednesday, 29.04. 
📍 On-site only
🍕 Snacks & drinks provided 
👥 Max. 40 participants 
🗣 Language: English

Agenda
18:30 — Doors open, networking, snacks
19:00 — Welcome from your hosts
19:15 — Talk: Infinite Loop * Infinite Space — James Thomas (Ada Health)
20:00 — Open Space
21:00 — Wrap-up


Full abstract: Infinite Loop * Infinite Space

How can we test software effectively when everything is subject to change, all the time?

Even if we assume stability for a moment, how can we cover the vast range of inputs, outputs, and product behaviours that any non-trivial application supports in a context where anything might have just changed?

In this talk I'll expand on that challenge and describe a tool I've built to help me address it for the product I'm working on at the moment. It combines aspects of model-based testing, property-based testing, and observability to take random paths through the application making assertions about its behaviour and generating rich data sets for post-hoc analysis.

The tool extends my exploratory testing capabilities by letting me ask all kinds of questions, in particular about things that it would be impractical to try investigate by hand because of the size of the state space of the system under test. It's not a substitute for standard regression testing but it is a powerful complement to it, and I often explore the product myself while it is running, unnattended, in the background on my behalf.

James is a software tester based in Cambridge but currently working for a German company, Ada Health, on a medical symptom checking application. He has been blogging about testing and software development at Hiccupps since 2011.