Month: January 2019

  • Is your Software Testing Ad Hoc – Part 2?

    We wanted to start the new-year off with a topic we hear a lot about from many, many people.

    A couple of weeks ago we talked about the issue of Software Testing being Ad Hoc and some of the reasons this might be the case. See the blog from January 14, 2019.

    The major concerns were loss of information, repetition and reinvention.

    The quickest way to stop this loss is to classify the testcases. This does not have to be complex at the beginning. You can classify the testcases based on the following criteria:

    1. Priority – High – must be executed with every release; Medium – must be executed at least once a release; Low – may be ignored unless there is a lot of time.
    2. Feature/Module/Function – This does require some thought at the beginning since you want to get the classification right to avoid having to do a lot of reclassification later.
    3. Level of testing – Unit, Integration, System, Acceptance – again something that might require some thought at the beginning to avoid having to reclassify things later.

    Obviously this is best done in a tool with a database behind it although a lot of companies start with a spreadsheet. The only expectation is that the next iteration of the project can at least see what exists and pick up what they need.

    Later you may determine other classifications that are useful. If you do, you may or may not want to reclassify everything that has already been stored. You may also want to do it over time as the testcases are used rather than trying to do it as one project.

    We have gone one step towards eliminating the ad hoc nature of the testing and now have something that can be reused.

    Contact us or join the discussion.
    Past Blogs
    Monthly Newsletter

  • January 2019 QA Events in the GTA and Beyond

    If you are in the Greater Toronto Area or Kitchener-Waterloo you might want to consider these events to network with other QA people or learn some of the new ideas in QA.

    NVP Software Solutions will be participating in the following software testing and quality assurance events happening this January in Ontario, Canada. The events are located in Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo in the coming two weeks. Check out the relevant websites for more information and to register. This is a great opportunity to connect with other software testing and quality assurance professionals. We hope to see you there!

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  • Is your Software Testing Ad-Hoc?

    We wanted to start the new-year off with a topic we hear a lot about from many many people.

    Our Software Testing is Ad-hoc (i.e. created or done for a particular purpose as necessary.).

    • It is never reused.
    • We are always looking at testing each project as if it were a brand new experience.
    • Very little gets carried forward from previous projects and a lot of stuff seems to disappear

    If you have heard this or felt this way, you are not alone. The comment that “We had this somewhere but I cannot remember where or cannot find it right now” gets repeated a lot.

    The question is why does it occur. Some of the answers are below:

    • Project budgets are not built with the intent of supplying tests to later projects.
    • No-one can predict whether the same testcases will be needed in a future project
    • No-one can predict whether the testcases will be valid for a future project (may be outdated).
    • It is not possible to estimate how long it will be before an update is needed and we might re-use the testcases.

    All of the above reasons mitigate against creating and retaining robust testcases suitable for future use. The end result is ad-hoc testcases created for the project and discarded after one or a few uses.

    If you want a process that will solve this problem, come back in 2 weeks when we will provide a methodology that will solve this problem at minimal project cost and with positive ROI over the lifetime of the software.

    In the meantime, if you are in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) or KW, see our next blog next week about the coming presentations.

    If you cannot wait for the two weeks for an answer look at some of the following information:

    Contact us or join the discussion.
    Past Blogs
    Monthly Newsletter