Comments on: Monkey business value http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/ embracing uncertainty Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:47:07 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Dan North http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7817 Sun, 07 Sep 2008 18:15:13 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7817 Hi Henrik.

You are right of course. Exploratory testing is much more than monkey testing – it’s about using the application in different and unexpected ways to see how it behaves outside of the expected use cases. Monkey testing is one tiny subset of this, and the idea behind something like rmonkey is to automate this class of exploratory (meaning out-of-the-ordinary) testing and free up the testers to spend their time exploring other aspects of the application’s behaviour.

]]> By: Henrik Andersson http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7816 Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:19:07 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7816 I see that you are a developer and to a tester :)
Most of the developer says that test automation is solution to everything, but that okej for me to think that.
But comparing Exploratory Testing with “monkey testing”, is little bit to much. E.T is more the punching the keyboard to get randomly input. So please don’t E.T for monkey testing.

Best Regards
Henrik

]]> By: Sai http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7815 Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:55:32 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7815 Stochastic monkey testing is good but it also better to give it a sense of direction using model. I am currently working on the model based testing tool using Ruby. I had tried this with Python.

]]> By: Sai http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7814 Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:53:19 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7814 I suppose stochastic monkey testing is good and effective. But giving it a sense of direction is also good with the help of model of the application. I am planning for a model based testing tool using Ruby. I have already tried this with Python and was succesful.

]]> By: Steve Campbell http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7813 Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:26:56 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7813 This looks like some of the work being done on testing at Microsoft, although they have gotten much further than you suggest. http://research.microsoft.com/Pex/

]]> By: silk and spinach http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7812 Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:09:43 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7812 carnival of the agilists, 1-mar-07…

This issue of the carnival consists entirely of Britblogs!…

]]> By: dancingmango » This impatient monkey http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7811 Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:20:36 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7811 [...] The developer tuts, “it’s your own fault” he says, “you broke it with your impatience”.  And that is why Dan North’s recent blog about Monkey Testing fills me with happiness.  Testing software for my monkey behaviour, so that it doesn’t break when I do things that I’m not supposed to do – because I am human. [...]

]]> By: Agile Runt http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7810 Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:47:01 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7810 Have you checked out OpenSTA and other load test apps? If I understand the philosophy correctly, I think some percentage of monkey factor is usually baked into these kinds of tests (eg. 83% of users will follow the defined path, while 17% will go off and do something wierd) to give the load testers a more realistic scenario. Cool stuff, there might be some good ideas in there that can be aped (tee hee!) for acceptance testing.

]]> By: Dan North http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7809 Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:00:18 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7809 I agree. The purpose of RMonkey isn’t to replace exploratory testing, it’s to simulate realistic soak testing. The randomness allows you to run a large number of similar-but-different, authentic paths through an application. You would be looking for things like deadlocks or timeouts – things that are difficult to detect without load or soak testing, but where lots of instances of identical paths might not show up an error.

It’s then up to the testers to determine whether it’s a defect that should be fixed or whether it’s acceptable behaviour and enough of a rarity not to care. So the programmers wouldn’t invest effort unless it was deemed to be worth it. Or something like that anyway – as I said, it was late at night :)

]]> By: Prashant Gandhi http://dannorth.net/2007/02/15/monkey-business-value/#comment-7808 Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:58:23 +0000 http://dannorth.net/2007/02/monkey-business-value#comment-7808 Dan,

Testing your code to prevent code entropy and to scope the development task is valuable. Writing tests to replace exploratory testing is not.

Monkey testing would give another excuse for developers to code for functionality which has not really been asked for. Also, isnt it faster to just do the random exploratory testing than writing tests for it ? And if those tests are really important, I would argue that you would need them in your story acceptance criteria as main tests.

Just my $0.02 for what its worth !!

regards,
Prashant

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