Pathways is a concept and (reference) implementation for automatic verification (or testing) of a product. Especially, during iterative development; like Agile and Scrum. It also fits in a Lean (sw-development) approach.

With this pathways-framework, testers can write short Automated Test Scripts (‘ATS’es); without being a trained programmer. Those test are Lean, and focus on “user acceptance”: Does the product behave as specified/expected.

As the test should be domain (“business”) specific, several layers of abstraction exist. Typically the are added by the development-team; party by the testers and party by programmers. The framework itself has only a few generic one. Some more examples can be found in the documentation; which include a workshop/training. (The slides are free).

An important design guideline for the pathways-framework is the (maintenance) cost of all those ‘ATS’es; that should be minimised. This (almost) implies, the framework itself is advanced: it allows to be extended with plugins; e.g to interface/communicate with the Product Under Test (PUT), (TsT)Bricks and (TsT)Vectors. This make it possible to combine open-source and propriety parts.

An other goal of Pathways is to provide a (free) “play” and “demo” version of this concept. One can use Pathways to learn this concept, but use a own implementation of it. Several of the later exist (all closed, propriety source).

Pathways was conceived after a challenge of a colleague/friend:

Build a simple version of it.

So we can play with it. And learn the concept, easily.

For more information, please see the website (under construction), or contact me.

--Albert Mietus