Design Testing Strategy

Design Testing Strategy

A reference manual for designing a fit-for-purpose, fit-for-criticality testing strategy.

This skill is decision-oriented, not philosophical: every gate is deterministic (ON when X / OFF when Y), every schema is enforced (field ordering matters), every example is worked end-to-end.

How To Use This Skill

1. Read Decision Gates in order (Gate 0 -> Gate 6). Each gate is independent — you may finish with any subset of test types ON.
2. Apply Strategic Skip Heuristics to remove ON gates that would yield low ROI for this artifact.
3. For each ON gate, fill the Test Matrix Schema (selected_types entry) — the field order is load-bearing.
4. List rejected types in rejected_types and deliberate skips in deliberately_skipped.
5. Produce a Test Cases to Cover markdown bullet list using ISTQB techniques from Case Design Techniques.
6. Cross-check against the matching Worked Example (A pure function / B HTTP+DB endpoint / C UI component).

Decision Gates

Apply gates in numeric order. Each gate produces an independent boolean (applies: true|false). Gates do NOT veto each other — a single artifact may have unit + integration + contract + property-based all ON.

Gate Application Algorithm

for gate in [Gate 0, Gate 1, ..., Gate 6]:
    if gate.ON_condition_met(artifact):
        result[gate.type] = applies: true
    else:
        result[gate.type] = applies: false

if Gate 0 is true:
    short-circuit: emit empty selected_types, document criticality=NONE, stop

Criticality Scale (used by Gates 3 and 6):

Test Type Reference

Google Test Size Mapping

Google Test Sizes (Bland) and SWE at Google Ch.11 classify tests by resources (size), independent of scope (paths covered):

| Size | Process model | Network | Filesystem | Time budget | Notes |