Rare error case scenario - should it be part of specification by example?

[JK]

Hi,

We are thinking to add scenario to our specification set that is very hard to produce and looks like it is a theoretical use case.

Lets say we have a system that one of its feature is that admin is able to update a passwords for different database accounts. We were thinking to add a negative scenario that describes how system behaves when the update procedure fails with an error, and the user is not sure if the password has been updated or not. But it is an ultra rare case and without doing hacking of a system (for example: shutting down db when password update procedure is running) almost impossible to reproduce.

Should this kind of scenario by part of sbe? Our goal was to include it to describe a system recovery scenario for such a case. Or is it better to just include a recovery scenario in system manual and sbe is not a good place to include this thing? What do you think?

Regards

[Gojko Adzic]

Hi,

spec by example is a conversation technique, so if this is a case that is important to discuss, it should be part of the conversation at least. the fact that something is ultra-rare makes it an interesting boundary for a conversation, then you can later decide if the risk of that actually happening makes it worth to automate a test based on it, or perhaps design the system in a way that de-risks that in some other way, so that example becomes covered by some other key example.

if system recovery is a critical feature you want to specify (and potentially test in an automated way), perhaps this is a signal telling you that you should isolate that module so it can be kicked off easier and validated. automated tests don't lead directly to good design, but they can lead you away from bad design (eg if it hurts to test something, it's telling you that you should modularise the system a bit more).

gojko

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