Feature Test Plans (was Re: [F-10 Feature?] Nodoka notification theme)

[Will Woods]

On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 22:42 +0200, Martin Sourada wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 01:53 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > You should add screenshots to show the difference and expand on the test 
> > plan (how do you switch between the plan one and nodoka theme?) the 
> > release notes. We would definitely want to note this during release.
> > 
> > Rahul
> > 
> 
> I've expanded the release notes, added links to screenshots and a little
> expanded the Test Plan section. Does this seem OK now (I am not very
> good at writing such stuff)?

Here's the deal with Test Plans: A Test Plan is a document that tells
the testers how to test your feature.

While writing your Test Plan, pretend that you have an intern whose job
it is to test new features that land in Fedora releases. This brave,
brave soul has a few years' experience as a Fedora user and basic
familiarity with using the commandline to configure stuff, install
packages, and so on. 

Your job is to tell this person how they can test your cool new feature,
so they can either a) tell their friends about how cool it is, or b)
tell you (via bugzilla) if it breaks.

A good Test Plan should answer these four questions:

0. What special hardware / data / etc. is needed (if any)?
1. How do you prepare your system to test this feature? What packages
need to be installed, config files edited, etc.?
2. What specific actions do you perform to check that the feature is
working like it's supposed to?
3. What are the expected results of those actions?

Your answers can be short: "get a bluetooth keyboard and yum install
bluez-gnome newer than 0.25" answers question 0 and 1 just fine. But
they need to be complete and explicit: "Get an appropriate keyboard and
install the new packages" is not helpful.

Soon I'm going to start tracking down Feature owners whose Feature pages
don't tell me how to test their stuff. I'm happy to help write good test
plans, but you can save a lot of trouble by getting one ready *before* I
come bother you on IRC / by email / outside your window at night[1].

-w

[1] Only kidding. Probably.
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