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Test strategy

The parent of every test artefact. Replaces heavyweight test documentation with lightweight, machine-checkable gates. The guiding idea: when an agent writes the code and the tests, the scarce, valuable thing is honest verification — so the strategy is built around not letting an agent grade its own homework.

Principles​

  • Risk-based. Test effort follows risk, not uniform coverage. A rating at Design sets how much testing a change needs.
  • Agile Testing Quadrants mapped onto the seven phases — technology-facing and business-facing tests, supporting the team and critiquing the product.
  • Every loop deposits test capital. Each escaped defect adds a regression test; each turn of the loop leaves the suite stronger (Flow-state).

Who owns which quality decision​

  • Manual Tester — the professional sceptic of agent output; session-based exploratory testing with charters.
  • Auto Tester — directs agents to generate and maintain the automation, and owns suite health.
  • Senior Dev — accountable for the tests merged with the code.
  • SME — owns domain-correctness sign-off where flagged.

The standards under this strategy​

Why mutation testing is central​

Coverage says the tests ran; it says nothing about whether they assert. An agent can produce 100%-coverage tests that verify nothing. Mutation score — did the tests catch a deliberately injected bug? — is the measure that can't be gamed, so it's the arbiter of test quality at the merge gate.