Mutation testing

Test automation is a helpful technique to help you get insight into the state and the quality of your product early and often. But did you know that your automated tests can deceive you? Do you know what the quality of your automated tests really is, and if you can trust the information produced by your tests?

Or, as the Roman Poet Juvenal put it much more eloquently:

Who guards the guards themselves?

One of the techniques that can help you, your team and organization get more insight into the quality of your automated tests is mutation testing.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how mutation testing works, what it can do for you, and how to interpret the information given to you by a mutation testing tool and use that to improve the quality of your tests.

Workshop contents

My mutation testing workshop covers, among other things:

• Ways in which your test automation can deceive you
• Why code coverage alone is not a good indicator of the quality of your tests
• What mutation testing is and how it works
• How to perform mutation testing on a product and test codebase
• What mutation testing results can tell you
• How to improve both your test code and your product code based on mutation testing results

There’s no better way to learn than by doing, so you’ll be presented with a variety of hands-on (programming) exercises throughout this course. To illustrate that mutation testing is not just for unit tests, the workshop uses an API as the system under test, complete with controller, service and repository layers, as well as a real (in-memory) database, and integration / acceptance tests to test it.

I can run this workshop both in C#, using Stryker.NET, and in Java, using PIT.

Intended audience and prerequisite knowledge

This workshop is aimed at software development and testing practitioners who want to learn more about mutation testing and how to use it to get more insight into and improve the quality of their tests. Some previous exposure to object-oriented software development and test automation will make it easier for you to follow along.

Delivery and group size

This workshop is a great fit both for an on-site or an online in-house workshop and as a half day conference tutorial. I recommend a maximum group size of around 15-20 people.

Duration

The full workshop typically takes 3-4 hours. I recommend a length of at least 2 hours.

Interested?

If you would like to book me to run this workshop in your organization or at your conference, or if you have any additional questions, please email bas@ontestautomation.com or use the contact form on this page.

For an overview of all training courses and workshops I have on offer, please visit the main training page.