What is technical testing?
Technical testing is an approach where testers use technical skills such as programming, scripting, and development practices to inform their testing. This approach can be used to help testers reveal in-depth information of a product that typically less technical based testing would not reveal. Technical testing is more of a mindset than a set of prescribed activities, focusing on how technical knowledge can help me as a tester.
What technical testing examples are there?
Using browser tools to learn technical details about my product and manipulate my product in unusual ways Pairing with a developer as they build the product to test their ideas and the code as it's created, I could use a HTTP proxy tool to monitor traffic between product components.
What's the value?
The technical knowledge of your product can help you generate new test ideas and inform your test strategy. Technical knowledge can help communicate with developers by providing detailed evidence of bugs or having technical conversations about new features. You can use tools to create complex tests to discover interesting and complex bugs that sometimes have severe consequences.
Are there any pitfalls?
Whilst understanding how to code can help you with technical testing, Technical testing is not solely about coding. There are tools that can be used that don't require programming skills. Also, focusing too much on the technical activities in testing can become a distraction with testers wasting time on setting up or building tools.
