Test situation

Definition

A test situation is an isolated condition under which the test object displays a specific behaviour that needs to be tested. Test situations are in other words isolated or individual possibilities that needs to be tested.

Each test design technique is aimed at achieving a certain coverage in order to find particular types of defects. In this, the first step is to distinguish the situations in the test basis that are to be tested. The test basis consists of, for example, the system requirements, the functional design, the user manual and/or the administrative procedures. This test basis is gone through and each situation to be tested is identified in it. The test design technique prescribes the situations to be tested. For example that each input field is tested with a valid and invalid input value. Since the distinguishing of test situations is different for every test design technique, this step contains the biggest differences between the various test design techniques.

A specific example of different test situations:

When testing an internet webshop, a typical test situation would be ‘an order of more than 1 book’. Another test situation that is closely related would be: ‘an order of exactly 1 book’

And if, for instance, a discount on an order would not be offered until the order price exceeds a specific threshold value, the following test situations would be logical:

‘order price above threshold value’, and

‘order price below threshold value’