3-in-1: Spec, Test script, and User Manual

3-in-1: Spec, Test script, and User Manual

I know there is the other side of the same coin: you may say that the “test” in “TDD” is not just “testing” per se; or, the user perspective in the spec is not just “user manual writing” per se -- they are deeper, etc.

However, before we get deeper into it; let’s test the water, and try the “shallow” things first and see how powerful it can already be.



---- “Test script” introduces a very good thing: it forces us to use consistent data in a scope that as large as possible. Fit makes it more explicit (see my previous posts; vikas has some good posting http://vikasnetdev.blogspot.com/2006/07/faq-fit.html); however, even you do not use Fit per se, you should use the concept of it: use “real” data (OK, as realistic as possible), in tabular format.

---- “User Manual” introduces another very good thing: it presents the UI, and describes things according to the typical usage flow, of the result of button-clicking. All other things (for example, typing, tab ordering etc.) are organized into those UI and button-clicking descriptions.



You may say, we are a big company, and we are doing large projects, and we have different official formats for those different documents. Good. Re-format the same document according to their official formats. You can ask some lucky volunteers to do that, or even better, create a program to do the conversion.

You may say, our QA department and Users department own those documents, so, it is not up to us … OK, in that case, it is simply a gift to them that IT has done most of the work already – they are going to love it.