A Better Way – Case Study 5 – Distributed with Poor Testing

A Better Way – Case Study 5 – Distributed with Poor Testing

In our last several blogs we have discussed ‘A Better Way to Test”.

The issue is to apply this to actual situations. We have 5 Case Studies we plan to use over the next several weeks to address this. The fifth case study might be called “Distributed with Poor Testing”.

In this case the developers were geographically remote, the Quality Assurance (such as it was) was local and the clients were geographically remote. This was a somewhat unusual situation since it is frequently the Quality Assurance that is remote and the other two local. However, some of the considerations had to be the same. We needed a way of communicating things without losing anything in transit.

Two solutions came to mind immediately:

1. Make sure there are stated expectations regarding the flow of information. This applies to any artifact like a test case, a requirement, a defect, or a design document. We did this via some flow charts we placed in the Master Test Plan although there are certainly other places they could have been recorded.
2. Acquire some tools that will support this information store. There are many free or very cheap cloud-based tools that support these processes.

Once we had the framework in place, we set up the appropriate loops and feedback mechanisms to ensure information flow and good quality. As time went on we expanded the groups who had access to the systems ensuring that the information flowed in the correct way and with sufficient security to the concerned parties. The two way flow of information allowed us to eliminate a backlog of defects that had accumulated and start addressing customer concerns in a timely manner.

The investment was not large when compared to the improvements realised.

If you want to discuss this further contact us.