How to Test Smarter?
Test teams do a great job nowadays, but that is too under difficult circumstances and compressed schedules. Thanks to budget crunches and concerns about security and usability. This article will help you test smarter in a better and simpler way.
We can help testers to do a better job – a smarter job, by encouraging them to refocus on some of their efforts, by keeping them away from test documentation, and instead of using that time to expand exploratory and ad hoc testing.
Table of Contents:
Improve Test Efficiency – Learn the Know-how
The Problem
One of the biggest problems that IT organizations are facing today is the compressed development cycle. No one plans for cycles that are longer than a couple of months, except for huge enterprise initiatives. Managers have to deal with short cycles and get quality software out the door.
Coders have to write software quickly. The testers have to accommodate themselves to the new and changing functionality of ever-more-complex software without letting the defects slip through undetected.
The Solution
Something has to be done to improve the efficiency of testers. Yes, better SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) tools can certainly help to improve the productivity of both the programmer and the tester. Automated test technology is incredibly important to both agile and traditional teams.
With great development tools, agile processes, continuous integration, and test automation systems, quality assurance has become a serious bottleneck, as the business demands ratchet up the pressure and compress the deadlines.
That means testing should be smarter. Reallocating resources from creating documentation and instead focusing on adding value to Exploratory Testing.
Reducing documentation doesn’t throw quality out the window. No, absolutely not. The Test Scripts are still created and allowed to run. Testing smarter requires the developers and tester’s plan, to build and run essential Unit tests, Functional tests, Acceptance tests, and Security tests.
However, smarter testing means acknowledging the fact that some tests are more important than others, and as such, they should receive more attention as well, including documentation.
Consider if a traditional agile team is given to add new functionality to a website or mobile application. Early in the sprint, the team would create a test plan and create new test cases or modify the existing ones. Once the coding is done, the team will run those tests and document the execution results along with the defects.
If there are defects, the code will be corrected, and the tests will be rerun. Sometimes, the defects might require the agile team to reexamine the test cases, as well as the code, and potentially update them as well as rerun tests, and repeat them if required.
Creating and updating test cases takes some time and resources as well. So is documenting the test cases and each of the test runs (though automation helps).
Most test documentation adds no value to the business. If the team tests smarter, testers can focus on writing up test runs if and only if defects appear, instead of documenting every test case and test run. If the test run’s results are negative (i.e., no defects), then you must move on.
If the results are positive (i.e., defects appeared), then yes, testers should document the test, including whatever is required to reproduce the defect.
Example
Imagine there are 100 new test cases for a particular sprint. All those 100 test cases must be examined, possibly updated, and thoroughly documented.
How to Test Smarter: Let’s test smart. Say that it’s determined that 10 of those test cases need to be carried forward for future regression testing. Perhaps another 15 tests failed during execution by producing unexpected or undesired results. Then the team needs to document only those 25 key and failed test cases — not all 100 — imagine how much time is saved.
Use that left-out time to improve the quality by encouraging developers, testers, and other stakeholders to do the more exploratory, ad-hoc type of testing. If the team is fortunate enough to have test automation tools that can turn ad-hoc tests into reusable test scripts for future regression tests, that’s a bonus then, since exploratory tests can be turned into test-case workflows.
Make no mistake: Before development teams decide to test smarter, and stop documenting certain tests, it is essential to ensure that the testers truly understand the goals of a particular development project or phase, and therefore new tests will not be required for future sprints.
In agile shops, that means knowing the objective of each sprint. Understand what’s new or changing in that sprint and in the backlog. Understand the user stories. Agree which tests are actually required in that particular sprint (and thus it need not be documented) and which tests are required for future Regression Testing and acceptance testing (it should be thoroughly documented).
Ask yourself, “When the end-user receives this sprint’s code, what would he/she be most interested in?” You need to test there and document those tests. However, also ask, “What parts of the code would the end-user probably not be thinking about, but where he/she could find problems?”
Those questions will guide developers, testers, and other stakeholders toward edge cases and situations that cry out for exploratory and ad hoc testing.
The team leaders should envision a high-level approach to what should be tested. There will be key scenarios of each sprint that need to be tested and re-tested because they are highly vulnerable or foundational for future sprints. Once they are identified, then those scenarios can be packaged for future regression testing.
By contrast, code areas that are not of high risk can be tested once, especially if that code is stable and if it won’t affect future feature enhancements. Therefore, no documentation is required.
Conclusion
We are all under pressure to deliver more codes quickly. To accelerate software development without sacrificing quality, test smarter!
Use test automation whenever possible, and continue executing unit tests when a new code is checked into the source-code management system. Document and run regression tests on a critical code, of course, but don’t waste time documenting tests that won’t be needed in the future.
Instead, utilize your testing resources for exploratory testing. That will improve the quality and thereby accelerate the development lifecycle.
About the Author
Vu Lam is the CEO and founder of QASymphony, a developer of defect capture tools that track user interactions with apps. He was previously with First Consulting Group and was an early pioneer in Vietnam’s offshore IT services industry since 1995. He holds an MS degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University. You can reach him at vulam@qasymphony.com.
Let us know your thoughts, questions/comments.
good idea. though we can’t replace full documentation creation process we can at lest restrict it for required tests only.
I am not often leave comment on SoftwareTestingHelp… But when I do…
Well this article is hurtful. I can predict the people will read this article and say “We do exploratory testing and we do not write any documentation!”.
Look at this continuum:
http://imgur.com/AmR3N95
It shows the real situation. In the real life, there are no extremes. I agree we need to document only the most important aspects of our work. Just enough to understand what have already done and what still should be tested.
“Write less documentation just because you are doing exploratory testing” would be logically incorrect conclusion
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this is one of the methods for smart testing but now days we must be smart in everything we do as a tester.
thank you.
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Does this mean that when a QA gets bored (which will lead to an increase in human error), focusing on ad-hoc testing is one of many solutions to prevent QA from getting bored? This is an interesting insight actually. Thanks for your article. Hope to hear from you soon.
Hello, Idea is really recommandable but ignore documentation is little bit wired on other hand method for smart testing really remarkable keep it up go ahead.But one request is don’t avoid the documentation process fully.
True, but the selection of what test to do in regression, how to do good exploration (e.g. attacks, tours, scenarios, etc) are left open. These are hard and take experienced skill. Getting these takes time and thinking.
good idea. don’t avoid the documentation completely but use it when necessary only.
Nice idea it also allows the tester to do smarter research in less time thanks to sharing this useful knowledge with us. ASTAQC (https:/astaqc.com/functional testing/) is one of the best Functional testing services for you. This will help to ensure that the functionality of the application or system is as intended.
good idea it is really help to do smarter testing it will really help for tester to do testing in less time thanks for sharing this valuable information with us
This may works for a stable team while all the team members know the product very well.
You will suffer a lot if the team is not stable (Old team members leave and new team members join).
This will not work all the time. For example,When a project goes to maintenance and an unexpected issue occurs and if the team is blamed that they missed to test that scenario and if it is not covered in the documentation then how can we prove that is covered during testing?
Don’t take Pressure.Be cool and Be clear in User scenarios. Everything comes behind you. Never Urge It will spoil everything
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Through sharing this useful experience with us, it also allows the tester to do smarter research in less time. ASTAQC (https:/astaqc.com/functional-testing/) is one of the best Functional testing services for you. This will help to ensure that the functionality of the application or system is as intended.