As the old maintainer of the Alexandria project is no longer available for questions and there is no documentation, black-box testing is more difficult. Thus, we decide to get to know the software better through investigation and then doing some spikes that will leak internal knowledge to us about the system.
We will later use this knowledge to implement the new feature.
Black-box testing is a method of software testing that examines the functionality of an application without peering into its internal structures or workings. This type of test can be applied to virtually every level of software testing: unit, integration, system, and acceptance. It typically most if not all higher-level testing, but can dominate unit testing as well.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-box_testing.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-box_testing.