Section 14.1. Introduction

14.1. Introduction

It's Wednesday, and Sarah, another tester, joined Emily and Don to develop Fit tests for actions that involve a sequence of steps in the use of RentEz. After choosing cash rental as a suitable area of use to gain experience in such tests, they began.

Don and the other testers had previously tested such actions through the GUI. "We'd developed automated test scripts to do this, but the GUI kept changing, and we were too busy to keep the tests up to date. After much frustration, we'd given up on the automated tests and had gone back to manual testing." Don smiled. "We're eager to find a way with Fit to avoid these problems."

We all agreed that the tests would be independent of the GUI but would address the important testing concerns. Instead of trying to write complete tests, Emily, Don, and Sarah wisely decided to ignore many of the issues until they'd made progress on the fundamentals. This is a good approach; otherwise, it can be difficult to make progress when too many issues are competing for attention.

Questions & Answers

Q1:	But doesn't testing through the GUI ensure that the GUI itself works correctly as well?
A1:	Yes, that's true. However, as we'll see, there are many benefits to separating concerns, to focus on one sort of test at a time. With many testing issues in the business logic, it pays to get that sorted before automating GUI-specific testing.