It is that time of year where people upgrade from one version to the latest or nearly latest version of Moodle. I have heard many ask ” Is the a list of user tests for Moodle” and recently answered one on LinkedIn that was similar, looking to get a freely downloadable list of user tests.
So I thought I would take my reply and add it here with some more context.
Each test plan that we do following upgrades or customisations / installations is different and unique to that organisation. It depends on how they use Moodle, what they have in it, what integrations they have, what they want to use it for, who they want to use it and much more.
Generic QA Tests
So it is not really possible to provide a comprehensive 1 does all test plan, except for perhaps a vanilla brand new Moodle. Each release Moodle runs a set of QA tests -> ( See http://docs.moodle.org/dev/QA_testing for details on QA Testing) There are over 450 tests. (see https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDLQA-1 ) These include tests like “A teacher can add questions to a quiz” or “A teacher can change the order in which assignment submissions are listed”. This is great list and is a good starting point to make sure that anything you have added into Moodle site (themes, plugins, customisations/integrations has not broken some core aspect of Moodle).
However, if you are like many people using Moodle, you are not using a default Moodle install, and probably are not using all the features either. So do you need to do all the tests and what about other tests?
Your Moodle
Developing a complete profile the use of Moodle to prioritise where you should focus your testing, start there and work out to lesser used features and if some areas are never used – decide if you want to test them or not.
- However, you need to put together a list of test scripts to test each of the code customisations that you have done that it is doing as you expect.
- And how about those add-ons, you will should put together a list of test scripts to test each of features of the add-on that you are using to ensure it is working as expected.
- What about your theme? You should also have a suite of tests to ensure that it is working as expected and that any custom features in it work as they should.
- Now consider, browser variety, screensize/device variety, accessibility, again based on usage patterns you need to decide which you will use. Are your users all using IE8 or IE9? Is 20% of your access coming from iPads?
- So developing a comprehensive test plan for after an upgrade can take a lot of time.
- Don’t forget, make sure that you group tests per user type on system, and have those do the tests related to their tasks – having the end users involved in testing can be great to check their expectations.
In short, only you can put together a list of suitable tests for your Moodle – but do make use of what is currently available to give yourself a head start.
Automation
But there are some ways to automate testing, using stff like Jmeter, Selenium, Behat. See http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Acceptance_testing
For more information on all this topic, check out the excellent and informative section on Moodle Docs on Quality Assurance -> http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Category:Quality_Assurance
Questions for you..
Do you run sets of user tests after you upgrade?
Are they manual? automated?
Do you add tests for your plugins?
