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    Two Common Myths About Software Testing

    Historically, testing has often taken low priority for many software projects. If a team had dedicated testers, they were often siloed from developers, waiting for work to be tossed over the wall. The widespread adoption of Agile methodologies has primarily erased the meaningful boundaries between testing staff and the rest of the team.

    Nevertheless, when we look at the broader industry, we see continued confusion when testing the software. In this article, we examine two common myths and why those ideas can safely be debunked.

    Many software engineering training programs don’t offer software testing as part of the curriculum. Consequently, students who may otherwise develop an interest in the discipline never have the opportunity to do so. 

    Considering the importance of deploying high-quality software — both to your customers and users and your reputation — the topic of software testing strategies deserves some consideration. There are several misconceptions surrounding software testing strategies, especially who is in charge of creating the plan and how it should be carried out.

    Myth No. 1: QA Bears Responsibility for the Testing 

     

    First and foremost, this assumption is troubling because software quality — including creating a comprehensive test strategy — is everyone’s job. 

    The test plan is a document that details how to check that you’ve met functional or nonfunctional requirements on a project. The test strategy is a high-level organizational overview of the methodologies and environments used for testing.

    The testing strategy is built on organizational objectives and reaches beyond a single project. Consequently, many stakeholders must be involved in creating the plan. Aligning stakeholders helps ensure all goals are addressed and that the strategy stays up to date.

    Begin by acknowledging that there is a problem with the current process. You can’t expect changes if your team doesn’t know changes are needed. Then, specify how the current process impacts quality both internally and also for the end users. Make it personal, and explain to the team how every role can contribute to the testing strategy. 

    When a team is prepared to take ownership of its testing strategy, schedule a series of workshops to discuss creating a strategy, defining product objectives, and making the strategy actionable.

    Myth #2: Automation Will Simplify My Testing Strategy

     

    There is no disputing that automated testing is a lifesaver, especially for those repetitive, time-consuming tests that involve multiple steps and require large-scale environments.

    However, other tests in your strategy, such as exploratory and user acceptance testing, are cost-prohibitive to automate and deliver better results with human intervention.

    When a team starts working on a new product, they often want to turn the manual tests into automated tests—specifically, UI automated tests. It can even slow development because UI tests are brittle when they are used to test everything

    This slowdown often causes frustration for the team when the application needs changing, which may discourage them from automating other tests to avoid further disruption to development.

    Suppose the UI automation tests frequently fail due to “unknown/framework/driver” causes, or every additional test increases the time to maintain the existing solution. In that case, you are stuck in the ice cream cone anti-pattern.

    This happens because you have too many end-to-end tests and not enough unit tests, which causes the automated tests to run incredibly slowly and frequently fail.

    The best way to resolve this is to invest in clean architecture training so you can explain to the team why it is detrimental to automate tests only at boundaries. Ask the team to create a testing strategy guideline that will pivot the ice cream cone to a normal testing pyramid, so you can avoid future slowdowns.

    7 Best Practices for  Software Testing Strategy

     

    Creating an effective software engineering testing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are seven best practices to help your team overcome common roadblocks and implement a testing strategy that works:

    1. Make your testing strategy explicit and easy to find. 
    2. Involve the entire team in creating the strategy. 
    3. Separate high-level strategy from the details.
    4. List the primary business objectives the testing strategy tries to achieve.
    5. Don’t include technical objectives as the target for your testing strategy.
    6. Don’t list specifics such as tools or frameworks.
    7. Don’t include too much detail … one or two screens will do it.



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    About the Author

    Kamal Rastogi is a serial IT entrepreneur with 25 yrs plus experience. Currently his focus area is Data Science business, ERP Consulting, IT Staffing and Experttal.com (Fastest growing US based platform to hire verified / Risk Compliant Expert IT resources from talent rich countries like India, Romania, Philippines etc...directly). His firms service clients like KPMG, Deloitte, EnY, Samsung, Wipro, NCR Corporation etc in India and USA.


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