What Do Clients REALLY Expect From Software Testers?

In this article, we will understand what clients expect from software testers. So, let’s get started. 

Today, I am going to share some thoughts on what I believe the clients are REALLY expecting from software testers based on my first-hand experience working at client locations with daily face-to-face interactions and collaborating offshore via emails or phone calls.

IT services are an important and integral part of the software industry and customer satisfaction is important to succeed. Each client/organization may be different in their process, may follow different protocols, and may deal with different types of businesses.

However, the factors explained in this article are common and matter to everyone in general.

What Clients Expect From Software Testers

[image src]

5 Things That Clients Expect From Software Testers:

#1) Cost Benefit

When you think of selling or buying something, cost plays a major role and it is often one of the important deciding factors. Don’t we all eagerly wait for Black Friday, Flipkart Billion Day sale or Amazon’s great shopping festival?  We become crazy buyers during sale time. It is a simple human behavior to expect the right or extra worth for our money.

Companies and customers are no different. Cost benefits boost customer-service relations and it is not uncommon for service companies to lose bids due to lower quoting competitors.

The BIG question now is: How can we show cost benefits to our customers?

These points can help:

• Show them their money’s worth. Justify and provide supporting evidence for your estimates.
• Think of creative ways to save on expenditures.
• Tailor your quote. Instead of sticking to your standard process that costs a particular amount of money, provide cheaper alternatives. For example: Suggest critical path testing instead of completing system testing.
• Know your competition. A quick reality check of what other service companies are offering their clients at what costs it is important to keep your pricing model market relevant.

#2) Quality of Work

Quality and Quantity of work are two very different things.

Gone are the days when the number of test cases created or defects reported was used for productivity or quality indicators. This is not the case anymore.

The situation is more like the image below:

A) Know when to say “NO”.

We have all been in places where we have worked overtime, been on call over the weekends, attended late night or early morning calls, etc. However, what we do not realize is that we can say NO if things continue to get worse. Saying NO is the only way we can keep the quality of work and our sanity intact.

When doing so, raise your concern in advance and advocate for quality.

Here is a situation I was in that might give you a better idea of what I am talking about:

My Company won a new logo and as part of migration from an old company to my company, knowledge transfer sessions were planned. We, a team of 6 members, traveled to the client site. On the very first day after the introduction, we shared the KT plan. My name was tagged against multiple modules. One of those modules should have been totally out of my scope because I wasn’t even aware of that technology; it no way matched to my skills.

I went to the Knowledge transition lead and told him the situation –

• Too many work items were assigned to me, which in turn will hamper the quality and my ability to capture 100% in the sessions.
• The planned items had areas where my skills wouldn’t match and since I wasn’t the right fit, I might not understand 100% during the transition.

The lead understood the problem and revised the KT plan.

I hope this helps confirm that: If something is on our plate it does not mean we have to eat it all. Especially not if it means compromising on quality.

B) Test Case Completeness

How many of you agree with me that if we try to improve the way we write test cases, it leads to better quality?

Given Below are some common mistakes that are common in most test cases:

To summarize, if small details are taken into consideration in the design phase, the test output quality will be much more superior.

#3) Business Understanding

This is one of the most important factors that customers look for in testers. However, it is sad that some testers believe that their job is to write test cases based on FRS and make no effort to understand the business.

Try to understand the business first and then look into functionality; you can envision your client’s needs more and test accordingly.

Here’s an example – FRS states that the XYZ report should be generated with 3 columns as Date, Name, and Status’. The following are the test cases you will end up with when you take this requirement at its face value:

• Validate report XYZ is generated
• Validate report has 3 columns such as Date, Name, Status
• Validate the data in 3 columns.

However, if you keep the business applicability of this report in mind, you might have to test:

• What is the business purpose of this report?
• Does this report get generated every day?
• Who are the business users looking at this report?
• What is the source of data for this report?
• Should the report be generated if no data is available?

This is just one example, but I guess we all agree that better testing can be achieved by gaining business awareness and expertise.

#4) Availability

Whether you are a single individual supporting the customer or a team, your availability should always be checked ().

By availability, it doesn’t mean 24/7 support.  It just means clear and upfront communication about time off, alternative plans and being reachable and not going MIA.

Below are some of the models that the services industry follows:

• Staff Augmentation Model – If you are working on a staff augmentation model and are the sole representative of your company, it is advisable that the customer is made aware of your work timings and planned absences so that necessary arrangements can be made.
• Managed Projects Model – In a managed project model in which large project teams are formed and headed by delivery/project managers, having a backup resource plan no longer remains the responsibility of customers. PM’s need to manage both planned and unplanned time off’s. In this model, it is advisable that the PM’s try to collect the planned absence data from their team ahead of time and manage accordingly. There are cases where customers request weekend support or extended work hours. Such cases should also be planned by rotating resources. A team should consist of members who can backup each other if required. The planned details should be shared with the customer.

#5) Scope of Improvement

This is not only desirable in the software industry but everywhere. Bringing improvement is not a one day job. The scope of improvement has to be worked upon continuously and can be divided into 3 steps –

Also read => How to Improve Your Testing Skills and Beat the Competition

Step #1: Identify

Do a thorough study and identify the areas/scope for improvements. Say, when you are asked to test the same functionality several times using the same process, there will come a time when you will feel that you either want to move out of the project or you change the way it is tested. That’s how improvements are brought in when we are bored of our existing methods, we think of changing and improving.

Step #2: Bring in Improvements

If things are done manually you can try to automate a few things. When I say automation, it doesn’t always mean buying an automated tool.

I will quote a situation: 

I was part of a database testing team. Our day to day work involved running the same SQL scripts multiple times in a day with a different set of parameters. When we started the project we were fine with these steps but eventually we understood the system better and we thought the same SQL scripts can be run as a part of stored procedures instead of someone manually updating parameters and executing.

Step #3: Evaluate the improvement

Whenever a new process is implemented you will need to ensure that it does work as expected and has no side effects. Extending the earlier example, an introduction of stored procedures, check if the output from the newly created automated way and the output from manual way are the same.

The other part is to monitor the benefits over a period of time to be absolutely sure and present the results to your clients. In our project, we showed the clients a reduction in test execution time by 30% which in turn reduced cost.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I just wanted to mention that each one of us have innate talents and we all have our own unique working styles. I have compiled a few tips that I believe can offer our clients a better service experience.

About the author: This awesome article was written by STH team member Priya R. If you want to write to us and share your experience, please let us know here.

Hope you enjoyed reading this article and found it informative! Let us know if you have a different experience to share in the comments section below.  We would love to hear your feedback.