Zig-Zag Taste: Think Different While Testing

Everyone tells to think out of box and think different to achieve quality so that we can ensure a bug free product. But How?

 

Testing a Software/Application is not that difficult if you keep few points in consideration. By adopting those points, you can feel the difference between a product and a Quality Product.

 

In this article, we are going to discuss about how you can make an approach towards quality while testing product by thinking slightly different.

It is matter of enhancing the curiosity beyond the very thin line of requirement. Often, we just stick to the requirement and more often it looks good but by making it in regularity it makes sometimes very difficult to find edges in the application.

“Discovering the unexpected is more important than confirming the known“— George E. P. Box

Usually, the aim of developers and testers are same to build quality product, but there way of thinking differs. By taking one of the examples, Developer who think that his application should run, but on the other hand, tester will think to crash that application by applying thousands of scenarios.

 

How to achieve solutions

 Everything that you want to work well comes when you make effort on that by using your dynamic thinking. Following the requirement document is surely a well approach but putting supplements to this will make a difference.

 

 

 

In life, one says do not look back but in testing, Look back and go through past defects/approach. Apply those approaches to your application. Sometimes you would have better approach which can easy your job/efforts so always look for the alternatives. Be prepare with test-plan, which includes what kind of testing you are going to execute, before starting with testing. Plan your resources, pre-requisite for testing, your test data, environment setup and other necessary stuff. Use tracking matrixes like traceability matrix so that you would have better ideas to focus on particular critical areas.

 

 Detailed Walkthrough

Make a note of it that testcases execution is not the only activity we should be careful on. There is other more areas as well which can improve your product. Even a small tweak in testing can be asset in your quality.

·         Do not let-off your first bug. Trace the route cause and find more count of spots. Do not let off your bugs. They may led you to have more count of bugs in software. A road blocker issue fixes will definitely give you something which you did not expect. So always, consider to give something extra on those areas, which you think may give extra ordinary by going deep down.

 

·         Expertise your target application.

Enhance your areas of thinking about your target application. Explore application requirement thoroughly, have ideas on similar kind of app for behavior understanding so you will get an ideal behavior of the similar kind of features.

·         Create a War Room sessions among the team.

Everyone has different prospective and different thinking of viewing any object. Conduct a peer review session and distribute the app with the peers. Session would of half an hour max but you may obtain many points after the session whether a bug or feature enhancement which will obviously gone to help you in your testing.

 

·       Believe in monkey testing.

There is stage where you have executed your test cases in testing cycle, then do spend some time on monkey testing where just go through the random modules and apply your scenarios as a user prospective. The benefit of this is, some of the user who does not know about the application they just go through different modules randomly so you can prevent the occurrence of bugs specially which occur randomly. This will cover maximum critical areas in less time.

 

·         List out the high priority issues and make your major focus on those areas where these kind of bugs are keep occurring. During testing we just need to look on the list of defects and find the areas where critical defects are reported most. List out those areas and put additional efforts on those areas.

 

·         Spend less time comparatively where no bugs are coming and put your major efforts on those areas where bugs are keep coming. You may find couple of areas in your application where you did not get a chance to have any defects.

 

·         Increase R&D skills.

Look at the similar apps available in market. Make a list of the features. Understand the behavior of those features. Compare with behavior with your application SRS and Come up with new ideas to represent to client.

 

Conclusion:

Therefore, I would conclude this article by saying that, Software testing is the execution which depends on everybody’s mindset, how you plan your activities.

Document plays an essential role in testing. Strategies, identification of entry and exit criteria, how usefully you are using your resources these kind of stuffs puts a remarkable force in testing. Tester always has be that smart who can think slightly differ from the other users/developer. They must have capability to break the working software by their thinking. You always need to shuffle between different strategies of testing thus it will help you to identify where you need to put an essential effort which can provide you better results.

 

“While we may understand the problem, it is critical for us to change our thinking, our practices, and continuously evolve to stay ahead of the problems we face.”— Mike Lyles