Thursday, 5 July 2012

QA PROCESS


Although every testing team follows their own set of processes. Is it possible to create a universal process that every tester must use to achieve best results?

When such type of question arises, often we find that people divided themselves in two groups i.e. Favor and Against .Let’s check out the both group’s viewpoint.

Favor: Yes It is possible to Create Universal Process to achieve best results. Every tester should know what is the test objective of his/her project, After tester knows the test objective clearly then he/she should know the different test Scenarios, along with different Test Scenarios Tester should know what is the expected result of his/her scenario. Testing process should be tracked by some logs or some different tools so that testing status can be tracked, When Testing is Completed then whole Testing Process should be reviewed by Team Lead so that QA for the featured can be certified. We  heard about a number of certifications like ISO and CMMi which focus towards establishing global processes across the organization and it’s projects through their set of protocols called as ‘process areas’. However, while implantation one can easily realize that all processes cannot suit the needs for all the projects and few deviations have to be made. But, all in all you can have universal processes in an organization which would ensure at least 85% of your projects follow the same processes; while 15% of the processes deviate.

Against :It’s quite difficult to have and implement a universal process which every tester can look up to as Software Testing is very vast field and every team/engineer has its own set of processes which might be very effective in the respective team. Though we can have few standard processes but those processes should be flexible in nature so that team can slightly modify them before implementing them in the respective project. There are some common guidelines that all testing teams’ follows like requirement analysis, test case creation, preparation of test plans etc. But it’s not feasible to have a universal process in place for all testing teams for many reasons like sometimes client requests to the respective QA team to follow specific set of process, lifecycle of products may vary. What methodology to follow is totally depends upon the nature of the product and mind set of the team. A testing team follows the set of rules according the need in a specific project. Few set of rules are developed by the team for a particular project according to the business requirements. 
But we also can develop few universal processes for an every tester that must guide him in any project. 

Below is little universal process which can be torch bearer for every tester.

1: Bug reporting should be perfect, comprehensive, exhaustive and flawless.
2: Testing should be focused on functional requirements and business logic.
3: Bug prevention should also be motive of every tester
4: Test case creation should cover all major and important scenarios.
5: Requirements are not very dynamic so that we can ingest automation in some areas to optimize our testing efforts.
6: Every team member should be in sync with each other and have good knowledge of application so that process can be well followed.

No comments:

Post a Comment