Error Guessing

In software testing, error guessing is a test method in which test cases used to find bugs in programs are established based on experience in prior testing. The scope of test cases usually rely on the software tester involved, who uses past experience and intuition to determine what situations commonly cause software failure, or may cause errors to appear. Typical errors include divide by zero, null pointers, or invalid parameters.

Error guessing has no explicit rules for testing test cases can be designed depending on the situation, either drawing from functional documents or when an unexpected/undocumented error is found while testing operations.

Error Guessing is the ability to find errors or defects in the AUT by what appears to be intuition. In fact, testers who are effective at error guessing actually use a range of techniques, including:

* Knowledge about the AUT, such as the design method or implementation technology
* Knowledge of the results of any earlier testing phases (particularly important in Regression Testing)
* Experience of testing similar or related systems (and knowing where defects have arisen previously in those systems)
* Knowledge of typical implementation errors (such as division by zero errors)
* General testing rules of thumb of heuristics.

Error guessing is a skill that is well worth cultivating since it can make testing much more effective and efficient - two extremely important goals in the testing process. Typically, the skill of Error Guessing comes with experience with the technology and the project. Error Guessing is the art of guessing where errors can be hidden. There are no specific tools and techniques for this, but you can write test cases depending on the situation: Either when reading the functional documents or when you are testing and find an error that you have not documented.