Test Charter and the Four Components of a Charter

A tweet from Ministry of Testing was -- Do you use Test Charters?

Speaking out of my so far practice, I heard the word 'charter' 10 years back when I was referring to SBTM in James Bach website.  Till then I had not heard the word -- charter.  The two words which confused me then was -- Mission and Charter.  

I looked into the sample SBTM reports which James Bach had shared.  I observed the word 'mission' for each session.  That is each session is chartered with a mission to accomplish.  Meanwhile, I strongly believe the spark that took off to testing globe wide referring such testing resources had its birth in Bengaluru then.  Most will say nah and disagree to it.  But that's the truth and Weekend Testing was one of its outcome.

Coming back to the subject of charter, I say, it was not that easy then for me to write one.  I got better each day and I try to get better today as well.  While I worked in the role of Test Coach in Moolya Software Testing, I pair tested with freshers and lateral hires.  I insisted the testers (whom I was assisting to practice testing) to write charter on their own.  I could see the difficulty they were going through and it was a mirror of me showing what I went through some time back.  In beginning all had difficulty to practice in session as they could not concentrate for 30 minutes (forget 45 or 60 min or 90 min) and to take make test notes in parallel.  Yet, there was no practice without a session and a charter to it.

To keep it simple and make lives of the tester easier, I broke the charter into four components. They are:

1. Intent  -- What is the intent of my testing in this session?

2. Target -- What I should be testing?

3. Resources -- What I should be referring while I test?

4. Information -- What information I have to learn from the tests and how to report it.

For example, say the charter of a session is -- Browse through the different doctors displayed based on specialty by swiping the doctor info card in the app. Validate if the subsequent result pages of doctors displayed is still relevant to the specialty chosen, while a doctor can have multiple specialty.  Refer to the HTTP request and response coming in for each result page and validate data displayed on client end. Report with logs and test data when you find or feel there is a problem.

The same charter can be written as this -- Test for the specialty displayed for doctor in search result is consistent in each result pages returned by server. Make sure the test data of doctor have multiple specialty. Report with logs and test data when you find or feel there is a problem. Make note of the confusion if you have any in analyzing the search result.

Also it can be written as this -- Test for the doctor card shown in search results based on specialty chosen.  Report with logs and test data when you find or feel there is a problem.  Make not of the confusion if you have any in analyzing the search result.

If I had to break this charter into four components, then:

1. Intent -- Search for doctors based on a specialty

2. Target -- Doctors info card displayed in the app that is search result pages

3. Resources -- Specialty of a doctor; HTTP request and response; Data displayed on client app

4. Information -- The search results returned and displayed are consistent with chosen specialty? Report if any problem and confusion.

All the above written three charters mean the same.  But how it is written and details provided, varies.  What style to pick and details to provide it depends on multiple reasons when I work with team.  When I work as a only tester testing, I keep the charter pretty self explanatory with details to the reader of session notes.

In my opinion, a tester gets better in writing charter when these four components is clear and can be identified.