Black and White Boxes

One thing that I've found can infuriate developers is when a problem report is written from a black-box perspective – the tester has reported a bug with no other information than what can be discovered through the user interface: "I tried this and it didn't work." I know it's infuriating, because I've been on the receiving end of these reports.

From the perspective outlined in the previous section, though, black-box test reports are the most valuable reports. (Here, "black-box" refers to the format of the test report, where the inputs to the software are described along with the difference between the expected and the actual output. In test planning, testers use the phrases "black-box" and "white-box" to refer to whether the software's source code was used in designing the tests; such tests are still likely to be executed via the software's interfaces.) Anything that doesn't work as expected...