07 · Testing · Path and evidence
Clicking success once does not mean this path was tested
The test engineer walks pass and reject against the rules table, and hands document evidence to the QA lead. One happy-path click is not a test.
| Document | Action | Expected |
|---|---|---|
| Source warehouse issue | Transfer issue | Source available drops, status in-transit, destination available unchanged |
| Truck not arrived | Query | In-transit sits in its own column; the store cannot sell it |
| Destination warehouse receive | Transfer receive | Destination available rises, in-transit clears, document closes |
| Same request ID issued again | Replay | No second in-transit document |
The test engineer proves the rules hold. He does not click a demo for the project
Every if, then, and must-not in the requirements table should become at least one case. What marks this role is that he is not satisfied with “the main flow already works.” Main flow working only means the happy path. Accidents in enterprise systems almost always sit on reject, replay, privilege, and timeout. He uses near-production data: a real source warehouse and a real destination warehouse. An empty carrier must not be filled with imagined perfect master data. Perfect data cannot tell you whether a deactivated item should still be issued. The night-shift over-receive facts were recorded by the business analyst. This role does not rewrite those twelve boxes.
He does not patch for development. When he finds a half-success on the books, he records the document number, the request, and actual stock, and sends it back to backend. He also does not write out-of-scope wishes as defects. Wishes go back to product. If defects and changes sit in one table, the QA lead cannot tell whether this build may be signed off.
Evidence is recorded on the path. Sign-off is not signed on this page
What the test engineer hands the QA lead is path evidence: which in-scope paths were walked, each document number, expected and actual, and what the environment was missing so it was not tested. Untested paths must name the reason. They must not be written as pass. Whether it blocks go-live, and whether the risk is accepted, is written on the sign-off sheet and signed by the QA lead. This page only hands evidence. It does not set sign-off policy. If the project manager wants to go live with risk, that signature is on the sign-off sheet, not a verbal nod on the case table.
These four rows must all be replayable
Transfer has to be usable on the day a store requests goods. The test engineer runs each of the four rows in the table once. On the fourth row, replay produced a second in-transit document. He does not write all four as pass because the first three passed. The defect goes back. After the fix, he only regresses the related four rows plus one privilege case: another warehouse's account must not issue this warehouse's goods. After the four rows and the privilege case pass, the evidence table goes to the QA lead.
First judgement on a document is still the test engineer's. The master-data version in the environment is written into the record. If cases all go green after someone restores the database, he first checks whether the master data was swapped. A pass that came from cleaner data cannot stand for the floor. Failure screenshots keep the document number and the time. He does not crop the failure down to red text. Every regression round starts with last round's failing case. If last round's failure does not reproduce, the close reason must say whether it was a code fix or an environment change. A disappearance caused by environment change does not count as the defect being fixed. Nulls are listed separately: carrier empty, lot empty, quantity at a full-pallet cap. When a real document shows a combination he has not seen, he adds it to the case library. He does not treat it as a one-off accident.
The master-data version is written into the evidence table. Cases for a deactivated item or a missing source warehouse depend on that master data. If the four rows all go green after someone restores the database, he first checks whether the master data was swapped for a cleaner copy. A pass that came from imagined perfect data cannot stand for the floor. Carrier empty, lot empty, quantity at a full-pallet cap are listed separately, because the floor fat-fingers those every day. Automation can fold these four rows into a build check, but first judgement is still the test engineer's. This page hands evidence. The sign-off sheet is signed at the QA lead.