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226 Chapter 8 Software testing

Kate is a nurse who specializes in mental health care. One of her responsibilities is to visit patients at home to
check that their treatment is effective and that they are not suffering from medication side effects.
On a day for home visits, Kate logs into the MHC-PMS and uses it to print her schedule of home visits for that
day, along with summary information about the patients to be visited. She requests that the records for these
patients be downloaded to her laptop. She is prompted for her key phrase to encrypt the records on the laptop.
One of the patients that she visits is Jim, who is being treated with medication for depression. Jim feels that
the medication is helping him but believes that it has the side effect of keeping him awake at night. Kate looks
up Jim’s record and is prompted for her key phrase to decrypt the record. She checks the drug prescribed and
queries its side effects. Sleeplessness is a known side effect so she notes the problem in Jim’s record and
suggests that he visits the clinic to have his medication changed. He agrees so Kate enters a prompt to call him
when she gets back to the clinic to make an appointment with a physician. She ends the consultation and the
system re-encrypts Jim’s record.
After, finishing her consultations, Kate returns to the clinic and uploads the records of patients visited to the
database. The system generates a call list for Kate of those patients who she has to contact for follow-up
information and make clinic appointments.

that the system passes the test. He also suggests that it should be easy to evaluate.
Figure 8.10 A usage
scenario for the If there are problems with the system, then the release testing team should recognize
MHC-PMS them. As an example of a possible scenario from the MHC-PMS, Figure 8.10
describes one way that the system may be used on a home visit.
It tests a number of features of the MHC-PMS:

1. Authentication by logging on to the system.
2. Downloading and uploading of specified patient records to a laptop.
3. Home visit scheduling.

4. Encryption and decryption of patient records on a mobile device.
5. Record retrieval and modification.
6. Links with the drugs database that maintains side-effect information.

7. The system for call prompting.

If you are a release tester, you run through this scenario, playing the role of
Kate and observing how the system behaves in response to different inputs. As
‘Kate’, you may make deliberate mistakes, such as inputting the wrong key
phrase to decode records. This checks the response of the system to errors. You
should carefully note any problems that arise, including performance problems. If
a system is too slow, this will change the way that it is used. For example, if it
takes too long to encrypt a record, then users who are short of time may skip this
stage. If they then lose their laptop, an unauthorized person could then view the
patient records.
When you use a scenario-based approach, you are normally testing several require-
ments within the same scenario. Therefore, as well as checking individual requirements,
you are also checking that combinations of requirements do not cause problems.