What to tell?

In the previous post I gave an example of interesting fishing trip story.
What makes it interesting? Details!

And same about software testing: details is the most important thing.

Automated testing script must report every little single thing to tester to provide as detailed picture as possible

When to tell?

While telling a story, people actually recall it from their memory. More importantly, they do it on a subjective way. That is, they may not remember things that were not interesting for them, and they are focused more on things that evoke their emotional reaction.

Although reporters do that another way. They make their notes while an event is happening, they try to catch as much details as possible, and they stay objective.

That’s the way testing script should go.

Testing scripts must objectively report all test flow events and actions logged during run-time

How to tell?

This question is easy but complex. Easy, because the answer is “log everything as is”.
Complex, because such implementation requires a well organized, highly structured, test automation framework.

Test log data should be stored in an organized format too. Excel table, HTML file, or XML file. I prefer the latter.