The implementation of screen capture and video capture tools as legitimate software testing tools is an interesting progression to follow. A few years back nobody in the software testing industry was even thinking about using screen capture tools to record defects. Yet now software testing teams are starting to see how simple it is to capture a defect with a video recording. That video recording is then used as a great communication aid to provide the required information to the development team. Yet I see this only as the beginning of a fundamental change in the way we go about testing software. Whilst it may be evolution, rather than revolution, the benefits of video screen capture in software testing can be taken far further than than just recording a defect. Why, for example, are we not using screen capture and video recording as a way of documenting test cases?
Currently we tend to think up a test case, run the test case and document the process (whether that is with Word, Excel or a test case management tool). The very fact that as software testers we are writing the test case down, demonstrates the fact that we expect to re-run the test case. We may also expect someone else in the software test team to re-run the test case at a later date (usually as part of a regression test suite). If, as software testers, we have the tools at our disposal to capture what we doing as we are executing a test case why don’t we just record it as a video rather than waste pressious time documenting and writing about the test case?
Yes it is useful to document, in writing, the purpose and aims of a test, but why spend ages writing in minute detail about the exact steps you follow to run the test case? Why not just record a video of these steps as you run the test case and then use that video as a documented record of the test steps and expected results?
I suspect that there are two reasons for this test case recording approach not catching on just yet. Firstly the concept of using video and screen capture in the software testing environment hasn’t quite taken hold, even as a simple tool to capture defects. Secondly there is the usual resistance to ‘change’ that affects all of us. We’ve all been writing test cases down using tools like Word for years, so why change now?
Yet the moment you experience the time and effort savings associated with capturing and recording a software test case with video, over the laborious effort involved with typing a test up, you will be quickly convinced of the benefits. Mainly the benefit that you can spend more time testing than you might do typing up documents. There are big efficiency savings to be made here with such tools. More than that, such an approach leaves the software tester to do what he or she is best at, and that is running software test cases.