Test Slow to Go Faster

Much like the book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, testing often falls into one of two buckets, ‘fast’ and ‘slow’. Fast, unconscious-like testing consists of quick checks, with little or no thinking to determine if a test should pass or fail. Fast tests click through test case steps with haste and obviously complete quickly but only focus on what is necessary to complete the test. Slow testing is where the computer, or human, takes a bit more time to measure, compare, or consider how to execute the test case, and to decide if a test should be marked pass or fail. It is critical to know when to test fast and when to test slow.