Context-Driven Testing

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What Does Context-Driven Testing Mean?

Context-driven testing is a certain type of software testing that considers the product’s use in the field, or a performance or production environment. It is one way that developers assess software as it is built, looking for flaws and otherwise optimizing its design before its eventual final release.

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Techopedia Explains Context-Driven Testing

Context-driven testing is something that experts would describe as a "philosophy" of testing, something that is done along with other types of conceptual testing in agile software development. Some professionals would say, for example, that some more abstract issues with user interfaces or user-friendly (or user-efficient) processes would be part of context-driven testing, rather than part of a more technical kind of software test. In other words, in context-driven testing, developers are looking at how people actually use software and whether that process works well, rather than looking for specific instances of code violations of syntax or function language.

The nature of context-driven testing is different than some other kinds of software testing that are more technical by definition. For example, black box testing and white box testing are two software testing methodologies that differ in terms of whether or not developers are looking at the internal design of a product. Other types of testing, like module testing and integration testing, have to do with whether developers are testing individual modules of code, or connected modules that form a functional component of a software program.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.