NVP Software Solutions

Category: Software Testing

  • Are your Quality Assurance Issues Worrying You?

    Are your Quality Assurance Issues Worrying You?

    Schedule a no-charge one hour consultation with a senior Quality Assurance consultant for an initial assessment/problem solving session.

    • Align your Quality Assurance Practices with your client’s needs before they ask.
    • Incorporate Quality Assurance and Testing to catch issues early while they are cheap to fix
    • Lay the groundwork for future success.

    NVP Software Solutions

    • NVP Software Solutions provides industry-leading software quality assurance and testing services, customized to address client’s business requirements. 

    Contact us: Nvp.ca

  • Get a Consistent Reporting Format

    Get a Consistent Reporting Format

    Reporting results is one of the bigger aspects of testing that is often overlooked in the beginning of a project.  The initial efforts are aimed at getting the testing environment established and the test cases written and approved.  Then the launch into testing occupies a lot of time ironing out the minor irritants to test execution.  At that point the request for reports comes up and the test lead is frequently left scrambling for data to report what is requested.  Failure to anticipate the reporting requirements can lead to a lot of manual work.

    Lessons Learned:  A few hours defining results reporting formats can save hours later in the project.

  • Too Many Disparate Pieces of Software (What Happens When One Fails or Goes Out of Business)

    Too Many Disparate Pieces of Software (What Happens When One Fails or Goes Out of Business)

    An assessment of an existing and successful system showed a lot of disparate pieces of software hooked together in various ways.  An inability to properly define and build effective QA environments for testing meant that some testing was not done and taken on faith that it worked or was tested in production (and fixed).  No API testing was completed so any failure of any piece of the solution had immediate repercussions throughout the product and had to be fixed on the fly.

    Lessons Learned:  A proper environment and knowledge and testing of the APIs would have solved a lot of the issues that showed in production.

  • Working Towards the Final Result

    Working Towards the Final Result

    Finding out requirements by digging through the hierarchy endlessly or how not to implement a product.  A recent upgrade included a migration from one database (home grown) to a commercially available product.  It is well known that migrations are always dangerous and can be quite time consuming.  The issue was that an attempt was made to replicate the existing (and mainly unknown) database into the new one rather than asking what was important to know after the migration was complete.  The testing turned into a series of cycles while the testers dug deeper and deeper into the existing database.

    Lessons Learned:  Make sure to take a 360 degree view of the expectations before going down the testing path.

  • The Importance of User Scenarios

    The Importance of User Scenarios

    A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned one instance of where Edge Cases relating to monitoring of queues caused a two month slippage in the project schedule. A similar issue came up with mobile phones that the client was accustomed to use when not at the desk. The product was designed with the expectation that users would be seated at desks and controlling the product via the workstation interface. When this was not the case, a substantial set of issues came up revolving around getting the calls to the mobile phones, making sure the queues were acted on properly and reacting to new messages. A further delay was encountered working through these unanticipated changes. There was also a problem with call recording for calls starting on the mobile phones.

    Lessons Learned: A scenario showing the Day-in-the-life of a user would have identified a lot of these issues.

  • The Importance of Knowing Report Requirements

    The Importance of Knowing Report Requirements

    Frequently reports do not come up before the end of project and obviously if the product does not work , then reporting on the results or activity will have little value until the data is correct.  However, that does not preclude confirming early in the cycle that the required information is available and in a format that will allow the reports to be formatted and populated reasonably easily.  A list of the existing reports (in the case of a product upgrade or a conversion) can be checked early in the project to ensure that the data is available in the new or upgraded product.

    Lessons Learned:  Make sure a list of the required data is available at the commencement of the project.

  • The Importance of Edge Cases

    The Importance of Edge Cases

    Frequently the consideration of Edge Cases comes up after all the main test cases are complete and passed.  They are often considered to be extra items that may or may not contribute to the major functionality of the product and it may not be necessary for them to all pass.

    However, we recently ran into a case where the ‘edge cases’ were very critical.  The product depended multiple people using it at one time and multiple people monitoring all the queues continuously.  However, in the implementation we were testing, some queues could be left unattended for a few minutes at shift change.  The product was not equipped (for safety reasons) to allow a queue to sit with no one monitoring it and it immediately moved the queue somewhere else leading to the ‘loss’ of the queue.

    The extra work late in the project added two months to the schedule.

    Lessons Learned: Even if the Edge cases are not immediately obvious they need to be listed and the impact determined in order to ensure that the product will address them.

  • Quality Assurance

    How to start QA with an unwilling company?

    Sometimes you run into a situation where a company indicates a wish for QA but will not put in any effort to make it happen. It looks like a large effort to them and they cannot see any reason or benefit. In this case there are several steps that you can take to make this happen. We will discuss these over the next few weeks.

    The need for Quality never goes away; it just reappears in a different format each time. The same techniques often apply; it is just a different situation.

    If you have something you would like to discuss, please get in touch. Our contact information is below.

    Test Leader or Manager with concerns? Test Managers Conference.

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