Quality Matters

Sympathetic Testing

Recently, I came across this interesting term in James Bach and Ajay Balamurugadas' blog. Instead of testing for bugs, Sympathetic Testing's goal is to focus on "learning" the product and its features. In fact, I'm sure that all of us already apply sympathetic testing to some degree without knowing it.

I flip through one of my favourite software testing book "Lessons learned in software Testing" and found this term. Let me summarize it: It stated "Early in the project, test sympathetically". Since early in the project, we don't know much about the product, we want to learn more about the product and confirmed that the product features are operational.

Also, I found these two quotes define what are the benefits and purpose of Sympathetic Testing: Quotes from James Bach's blog:
"... my main purpose is learning; building a rich model in my mind."
"...Sympathetic testing made me better at unsympathetic testing. Searching happily prepares me to search aggressively."

Having a good understanding of the product(By using Sympathetic testing), will later prepare us to be able to test more effectively in the future/at later stage of the product. This is indeed a crucial testing method that all of us should apply in our projects.

If you would like to see a practical example, you can visit Ajay's blog, he demonstrates a very good example of how he applies sympathetic testing.
I look forward to apply this method of testing for my next project.