Testing Process archives - Quality Assurance and Project Management

Quality Assurance and Project Management:

testing process

Jul 6 2009   10:00AM GMT

Five stages in a project when Software Tester becomes Quality Analyst



Posted by: Jaideep
Quality Assurance, Software tester, software testing, Project Planning, Test Plan, test case, product analysis, customer requirement analysis, product functionality, software functionality, software documentation, software document, test result, test performance, software performance, testing process, quality analyst, QC, QA, quality control, load testing, performance testing, functional testing, security testing, test coverage, software build, software, analysis, functionality

A software tester evaluates software based on certain parameters. These parameters are set as per product, customer and organization requirements. Testing could be just of functional features or include load, performance and security. For any parameters a tester has to work as quality analyst to understand requirements, features and accordingly build test cases and perform test. This is the quality control part. On quality assurance front the quality team has to build standards for requirement freezing, planning, development, implementation and post implementation phases of a project.

A software tester at various stages of a project gets on to the job of a Quality Analyst by performing following tasks:

Analysis of customer requirements: The first and foremost analysis required is that of the customer requirements to ascertain if it is complete, detailed and free from any confusions, ambiguities or equivocalness. Any flaw in requirements will certainly lead to a big disaster at a later stage. Unclear requirements are not difficult to build, but are difficult to manage. Every requirement should be in black and white. Each line should be very clearly documented such there should be nothing hidden between the lines.

Analysis of Product Functionality: Requirements documented and product built has to go hand in hand. It should not happen that requirements and product speak differently even a single line. Usually while testing functionality of a product, tester forgets to refer to requirements documented, or asks developer about the functionality. The developer will certainly explain him the functionality he has built not what exactly has been mentioned in the requirements document. If this happens, it will certainly cause a big blast at implementation or acceptance stage.

Analysis of Product related documents: There are many documents prepared during the project. Some are meant for internal use, some are prepared for customer. All these documents need to be inspected thoroughly and neatly.

Analysis of test results: Test cases are built to perform tests resulting in bugs report or test results report. A thorough scan is must to ensure complete coverage and thorough testing. The report should be detailed in all respects in terms of clarity and coverage.

Analysis of Testing Process: The testing process once establishes need to be revisited again and again to improve further at every go. Once established does not mean it is ultimate and best. Improvement has always a scope howsoever best your process or product is.

Jan 22 2009   11:03AM GMT

Is testing merely a Bug filtering process?



Posted by: Jaideep
software development, software testing process, software, testing, testing process, tester, project lead, Project Management, Bug, QC, bug filtering

In an organization engaged in software development, usually each software goes through testing process by a separate set of team in the organization know as Testers meant exclusively for the purpose of testing. It matters most what this process is being thought as by the development team, project leads and the management (and also the customer). Testers are taken for granted as Bug Filters and testing as bug filtering process. If that is so, the management is at mistake, more so, if testers or QC department also thinks the same. This sort of culture is good for testing purposes, but is not so for the purpose of improvisation in the development process. Testers are safe as they are able to dig out a good amount of bugs every time. Bug removal time is substantial. Even the targets of product hand over to customer are met.

Isn’t the testing team’s result decrease every time even after increased efforts! That means the development team in maturing with each round of testing and development. This can happen only in case testing is not merely thought as the bug filtering process.