Crowd testing | 21
will work in the future? What will it be like? And what will you do when the boundaries finally disappear?
The crowd
An important part of crowd testing is the crowd itself and its makeup. Indeed the crowd is the success formula of crowd testing. So it is important to Crowd testing have the crowd you or the client wants What exactly is crowd testing and for testing the application. So who what does it do? Crowd testing is a is in the crowd? It consists of many form of crowd sourcing where you different people who want to test. use both known and unknown people These people can be testers (beginners, – the ‘crowd’ – to test software. In experts and specialists), end users, other words crowd testing is the use or just interested people or potential of a crowd of people and knowledge users. It consists of your audience and when testing software applications if necessary paid testers. or systems. An important difference When determining the use of the compared to traditional testing is that crowd it is important to know what the test is focused on accepting the software instead of finding defects and they can or cannot do, why they has a different reward compared to the want to test, what is their knowledge or background and origin. If this current models. information is needed it needs to be A crowd consists of people all over available. This can be done by adding the world from different background, cultures and companies. This potential this information, and more, to a ‘crowd atlas’ which details who your crowd is group of billions can test for you and your client! So everybody in the world and what it can do; so your crowd is a could potentially be part of the crowd. known quantity. How do you build up this crowd? So others will test the software we This is perhaps the most difficult task. testers normally test? What happens The test crowd can be built up using to my work? existing networks like communities If done properly, crowd testing around crowd sourcing, around specific shouldn’t be undertaken on software topics like OWASP or around networks that hasn’t already been tested. It like LinkedIn and can include all who should be ready for acceptance. The are interested in a particular kind of professional testers need to have software. These people can be friends, executed their system tests and can family, co-workers, competitors, or in fact go on to be participants in the anybody else you may know. And crowd if they wish. www.testmagazineonline.com
A crowd consists of people all over the world from different background, cultures and companies. This potential group of billions can test for you and your client! So everybody in the world could potentially be part of the crowd. September 09 | T.E.S.T