When Should a Test Be Automated? 13

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Brian Marick


Testing Foundations
marick@testing.com


To estimate a test’s life, you need some background knowledge. You need to understand something of the way code structure affects tests. Here’s a greatly simplified diagram to start with.

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Suppose your task is to write a set of tests that check whether the product correctly validates phone numbers that the user types in. These tests check whether phone numbers have the right number of digits, don’t use any disallowed digits, and so on. If you understood the product code (and I understand that you rarely do), you could take a program listing and use a highlighter to mark the phone number validation code. I’m going to call that the code under test. It is the code whose behavior you thought about to complete your testing task.