“It Depends!”: Understanding Testability

Every project we join is different.

The people we work with, the product we’re delivering, and the technology we use is always different. Stakeholders, development process, pipelines and the company's philosophy, all different. It’s crucial to be aware of these differences when adapting to a new context, and the sooner we can do it the better our approach to testing will be.

All the above are characteristics of a broader term we call testability. Testability can be simply defined as ‘our ability to test’ and it is impacted by a whole host of factors. But awareness of them can make things a whole lot easier. My preferred testability model is the 10 P’s by Rob Meaney, it’s not complete, but it’s comprehensive enough to rapidly understand a new context.

In this workshop, we are going to create a testability canvas using the 10 P’s as our guiding characteristics. We’ll explore each characteristic, add news ones if required, and then apply it to your current context or a previous one. Resulting in a canvas you can use to influence your team's approach to testing as well as using it as a communication aid when explaining your testing decisions to stakeholders.