The Seven Basic Principles of the Context-Driven School

http://www.context-driven-testing.com/

Some catches:

Context-oblivious testing is done without a thought for the match between testing practices and testing problems. This is common among testers who are just learning the craft, or are merely copying what they’ve seen other testers do.

Context-specific testing applies an approach that is optimized for a specific setting or problem, without room for adjustment in the event that the context changes. This is common in organizations with longstanding projects and teams, wherein the testers may not have worked in more than one organization. For example, one test group might develop expertise with military software, another group with games. In the specific situation, a context-specific tester and a context-driven tester might test their software in exactly the same way. However, the context-specific tester knows only how to work within her or his one development context (MilSpec) (or games), and s/he is not aware of the degree to which skilled testing will be different across contexts.

Agile development models advocate for a customer-responsive, waste-minimizing, humanistic approach to software development and so does context-driven testing. However, context-driven testing is not inherently part of the Agile development movement.

There are always constraints. Some of them are practical, others ethical. But within those constraints, we start from the project’s needs, not from our process preferences.