A weekly source of software testing news
ISSUE #9 - Apr 2, 2017
This week’s topic is documentation around the testing efforts, from test plans to quality reports. I find that reporting is not a well solved problem in QA arena, please send me links if you know of good ways to track quality.
This post discusses the challenges of reporting on test progress and test results in an “elevator pitch” mode, and provides some advice:
http://blog.smartbear.com/automated-testing/reporting-test-status-to-the-business/
“Reporting TDD” concept that boils down to annotating your test cases with tags, so test results can be meaningfully grouped in reports. A sound idea albeit hardly a novel one; the author provides an SDK for use with TestNG framework.
https://mobiletestingblog.com/2017/03/07/introducing-reporting-test-driven-development-rtdd-concept/
If you like standards, this IEEE 829 Test Summary Report Template is surprisingly concise at 3 pages. Curiously, nowhere does it say to report pass/fail ratio (more on that below), but highlights coverage, trends, defect patterns, risks, and good quality areas (“include Good news as well”).
http://www.ufjf.br/eduardo_barrere/files/2011/06/SQETestSummaryReportTemplate.pdf
Michael Bolton’s take on reporting on quality: don’t go for test pass/fail ratios which are a misleading indicator (see Part 1 on why), tell a story instead like an investigative reporter (see Part 3 on how). Part 2 contains the main argument:
http://www.developsense.com/blog/2012/02/braiding-the-stories/
A good, short skeleton of a test plan document:
https://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/lessons/the-one-page-test-plan
Story checklists help with testing (and development), here’s how to get them. From Lisa Crispin, a well known name in agile testing:
https://www.stickyminds.com/article/small-experiment
How to write a good bug report, in mobile testing context but is generally applicable:
http://moduscreate.com/writing-solid-bug-reports-for-mobile-apps/
And a shorter version with a tall promise of producing “a bug report that will make your engineers love you”:
https://testlio.com/blog/the-ideal-bug-report/
Test strategy template spreadsheet (Excel), wow that’s a lot more paperwork than my QA teams ever did…
https://www.stickyminds.com/article/template-create-comprehensive-test-strategy
Mindmap as a tester’s tool to understand a new space and map out testing efforts:
http://apps.testinsane.com/mindmaps/first-day-in-a-new-testing-project
More on the use of mind maps in test planning and results reporting. Sadly, the generation and upkeep of mind maps is all manual… can’t wait for some tooling to develop around this promising approach:
http://www.bettertesting.co.uk/content/?p=956
Why and how to write documentation. This post targets the developer, but can be applied to documenting testing activities just as well:
http://ferd.ca/don-t-be-a-jerk-write-documentation.html
Recent conference notes from London’s UKSTAR 2017 on test automation, Gatling perf testing tool, a new buzzword “fearless development”, and more:
http://cyildirim.com/notes-from-ukstar-2017-conference/
Slide deck from STPCon 2017 (Phoenix AZ) on test automation patterns, incl. page object model, with and without a business layer on top, and test data specification patterns:
https://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/2017/03/patterns-in-test-automation-framework.html
While on the subject of testing conferences, here is a list of ones to attend in 2017:
https://www.qasymphony.com/blog/12-top-software-testing-conferences-attend-2017/
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