Test cases and me !

I began my testing career with test cases.

There were already some 500+ test cases written by someone else.

The team lead asked me to go through the test cases once, then asked me to run those test cases.

This was my KT (Knowledge Transfer) on the product!

So, I continued running those test cases.

Whenever a new feature was added to the product, I wrote new test cases in an excel file.

I was given a test case template. I added test cases to that template and uploaded them into the HP-QC (Quality Control) tool, later known as ALM (Application Lifecycle Management).

Test case execution for new features.

And test case execution for regression testing. This was my routine.

I thought this was ‘the testing’ activity.

One version of the product was released.

After a few days, many bugs were reported by users.

I wondered why?

I started analyzing those production bugs.

I tried to map them to our test cases.

Much to my surprise, none of them were missed from the test case point of view.

But those scenarios were not covered in the test cases!

Then I realized that test case execution was not enough.

I needed to do more to uncover bugs.

So I started to think of more negative scenarios, different flows.

I also started doing exploratory testing, which yielded good results.

I was able to uncover more bugs.

Lesson to you: Do more exploratory testing. Know the product first.

P.S: Do you have similar experience with test cases?