.. Copyright (C) ALbert Mietus, SoftwareBeterMaken.nl; 2014, 2015 Part of Pathways project -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

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Pathways: a test-guide for iterative developed software
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**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) <http://pathways-rd.rtfd.io>`_, or contact me.

--Albert Mietus