Testing is a complicated task and each activity has its own unique challenges and contexts. But. There are a number of core testing activities that we have to deal with time and time again. When teaching new testers, I try to go over this archetypes so they will be be less of a deer-in-the-headlights than if they did not know about them. Here are the ones I have thought of.

  • The Form – information is submitted into the system
  • The Report – information is displayed either on the screen or dead trees
  • Installation – and removal
  • Conversion – inputs in format X and converted to format Y
  • Batch – stuff is queued up to happen at some point in the future
  • External Provider – reliance on an internal or external service (SOA and Mashups are the prime examples of this right now)

I know I haven’t come up with them all by any stretch of the imagination. What else is there? I’m not interested in things like ‘performance’ or ‘usability’ as those are techniques and tasks that get applied to archetypes, not archetypes themselves.