Understanding Your Domain: Research for Testing - Melissa Eaden

This session would break down some techniques on how to approach researching for a given domain(s) which involve the software under test.

This session would seek to give the attendee a way to develop simple personas, understand market pressures, and research competitors.

This could be considered a mini-workshop or interactive talk. The goal would be to get the audience to do quick research katas which might be shared later with their development groups.

Katas could be, but aren't limited to:

• Domain identification
• User persona/Typical User identification
• Competitive Analysis:  Looking for domain competitors or near domain competitors. Also includes future feature identification.
• General Domain research: What information is out there about your company. What information is out there about your competitors. How do I find it.
• Internal research techniques: Who can I talk to about the product outside of development. What information is available internally. What sales pitches, informational materials, or help guides tell you or your users. Are they correct?

The goal would be to tie these activities together to testing. As an informed tester is a better tester. Likewise, an informed development group is a better development group.