What Questions we need to ask before Start any Testing

Before you start any testing ask yourself the following questions:

• How will the application be used?
• What is the purpose of the application? Information, entertainment, business, and so on.
• Who is the target audience? Who is the current audience? Who is the potential audience?
• What is the user scenario for using it? There may be several representing various classes of users.
• Will this be used from an Internet kiosk or other machine that the user has no control over? Should the application be verified in kiosk mode?
• Are alternative devices going to use this? (Web TV, PDAs, iMode phones, and so on.)
• What is the estimated user base for the first 6 months? First year?
• Are users paying to access your site or use your application? If so, their expectations may be very different than if it were free.
• Are there partners you are dependent on? Are partners dependent on you? Is there a plan if either your service is down or a partner you rely on is down?
• Is there a new user or first-time user experience that differs from subsequent visits?
• What dependencies does your site/application have? It may require that WinAmp, AOL Instant Messenger, or some other piece of software be installed, or it may make use of system- or browser-provided DLLs. If it does not rely on any system DLLs, then there may be no need to test on various versions of each platform family.
• Does your application install any components or controls? What if the user cannot/does not install it? What if you release a new version-is there an upgrade path for the users?
• If your application installs components or controls, where are they installed? Is there an assumed or hard-coded location? Will that break on a nonstandard configuration (for example, a Windows machine where the active drive is the F:\ drive instead of the more common C:\ drive)?
• If there is a component or control installed, is there an uninstall path for it?
• Does the component or control that is installed set any registry keys? When it uninstalls, all of these need to be cleaned up appropriately.
• What platforms is this supported on? What are the various Windows, Macintosh, and Unix versions, as well as various devices?
• Which browsers are supported? Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft MSN Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Pocket IE and Generic IE, Opera, Omni Group Omni Web, Amaya?
• Are there varying levels of support?
• What does the test matrix look like?
• What does the support matrix look like?
• What happens if you access the application from an unsupported platform? Consider a notification mechanism.
• What other requirements does the application have-security settings, script settings, cookie settings, resolution, line speed, and so on?
• Is there an internal coding standard?
• Is this feature necessary?
• Is the role of the feature in the application clearly understood?
• How will a user access this piece of functionality? List all ways to get into this feature.
• How will the user put data into this piece of functionality?
• What are those areas of user-defined input? What are the sizes of those areas (in bytes or characters)? What type of input do they accept?
• Where is the data output displayed?
• What boundaries exist for this data?
• What error states can come of this data or action?
• What states is the data available in? Map the creation, edit, save, display, and delete states.
• How is the user expected to navigate? Are Back and Forward controls provided in the application interface or is the user expected to use the browser buttons? Make this clear, but know what the behavior is when using the browser buttons.
• If the application makes use of frames, what should the behavior be when the user clicks the browser Back or Forward buttons? What about Refresh or Stop?
• Do errors occur when the page loads?
• Do all graphics appear properly?
• Are all similar icons of the same size (visually), giving a clean appearance?
• Is the download time perceptibly slow?
• Do all graphics have width and height tags to correctly place them into a formatted page while they are downloading?
• Are all links active and working? Are they accurate and/or descriptive?
• Are links relative or absolute?
• Should all links or active (hot) areas have the finger pointer (hand) displayed when the cursor is over them?
• Do the mailto links also display the mailing address?
• Can the user print various pages?