How does testing fit into quality

The pace of development requires a new approach to ensuring quality in each build. At Atlassian, the way we test is agile. Let's be clear: scripted manual testing is technical debt.

Much like compounding credit card debt, it starts with a small amount of pain, but snowballs quickly—and saps the team of critical agility. To combat snowballing technical debt, at Atlassian we empower nay: expect our developers to be great champions for quality. We believe that developers bring key skills that help drive quality into the product:. We believe each user story in the backlog requires both feature code and automated test code.

Although some teams assign the developers the feature code while the test team takes on automated testing, we find it's more effective to have a single engineer deliver the complete set. Treat bugs in new features and regressions in existing features differently.

If a bug surfaces during development, take the time to understand the mistake, fix it, and move on. If a regression appears i.

Create an automated test to protect against that regression in the future. This model doesn't mean developers work alone.

It's important to have QA engineers on the team as well. QA brings an important perspective to the development of a feature, and good QA engineers know where bugs usually hide and can advise developers on probable "gotchas. On our development teams, QA team members pair with developers in exploratory testing, a valuable practice during development for fending off more serious bugs. When developers become better testers, better code is delivered the first time.

Exploratory testing makes the code, and the team, stronger. But isn't exploratory testing manual testing?

At least not in the same sense as manual regression testing. Exploratory testing is a risk-based, critical thinking approach to testing that enables the person testing to use their knowledge of risks, implementation details, and the customers' needs.

Knowing these things earlier in the testing process allows the developer or QA engineer to find issues rapidly and comprehensively, without the need for scripted test cases, detailed test plans, or requirements. We find it's much more effective than traditional manual testing, because we can take insights from exploratory testing sessions back to the original code and automated tests.

Exploratory testing also teaches us about the experience of using the feature in a way that scripted testing doesn't. Maintaining quality involves a blend of exploratory and automated testing. As new features are developed, exploratory testing ensures that new code meets the quality standard in a broader sense than automated tests alone.

This includes ease of use, pleasing visual design, and overall usefulness of the feature in addition to the robust protections against regressions that automated testing provides. I'll leave you with a personal anecdote that nicely summarizes my journey with agile testing. I remember managing an engineering team early in my career that had strong resistance to writing automated tests, because "that work was for QA".

After several iterations of buggy code and hearing all the reasons why automated testing would slow the team, I put my foot down: all new code had to be proven by automated tests. After a single iteration, code started to improve. And the developer who was most adamantly against writing tests turned out to be the one who sprung into action when a test failed! Over the next few iterations the automated tests grew, scaled across browsers, and made our development culture better. Sure, getting a feature out the door took longer.

But bugs and rework dropped significantly, saving us huge amounts of time in the end. Change is rarely easy. But like most things worthwhile, if you can buckle down and create new patterns for yourself, the only question you'll be left with is "Why didn't we do this sooner?!

Developers work on making small changes to the code and upload small sections of code to the central repository regularly. You can incorporate quality management into this methodology by having a series of tests performed every time the code is updated.

The new segments need to be tested, but you should also conduct regression testing to see how changes affect the main features of the product. Continuous delivery allows you to release new iterations of your product on a regular basis.

This is a quick and efficient approach to addressing bugs and issues that affect the user experience. The key is to incorporate user feedback into your CI and CD processes so that issues can be quickly addressed and a new and improved version of your product can be released.

Again, you will have to incorporate testing in your process, for instance by having crowd testers perform usability tests before a new major version of your product is made available to users. The right QA testing methodology will provide the information needed by your design and development teams to produce a quality app. Remember that software quality doesn't depend on testing but on the outcome of your QA tests and how you use this data.

Your QA testing process is a process you will have to regularly review for efficiency as you move through the different cycles of your project. You can achieve high quality by creating a framework and best practices for writing and implementing tests. The code used for automated tests should be also tested, and the written tests sent to human quality assurance testers should be carefully reviewed.

Make it easy for everyone involved with your project to report bugs and share feedback. You also need to focus on efficiency. Using an off-the-shelf bug tracker like Jira is the best way to keep track of quality issues and to make sure they are addressed in a satisfactory and timely manner. Maintaining a list of clear quality objectives is crucial for achieving speed and high quality. You should also take into account the ISO quality management standard, as well as your stakeholders needs.

Working with a clear set of quality objectives will help developers, testers, and designers to get a better understanding of what is expected of them and foster an environment where everyone owns quality.

Crowdtesting is another element of the QA puzzle. This approach helps you to save a considerable amount of time and will unlock new possibilities if you have been limited in the depth and scope of your testing. Crowdtesting allows you to conduct tests on a much larger scale. You can have thousands of QA testers on a wide range of devices, operating systems, and networks, meaning they can cover different scenarios, find more bugs, and complete tests within a matter of hours.

Start by rethinking the way team members work, for instance by adopting the agile methodology or making CI and CD the core elements of your workflow. You should also combine different testing methods, including in-house testing, automated testing, and crowdtesting. QA activities are ultimately process oriented. Quality Control, or QC, is a software engineering process, typically used to ensure the quality of the products or services.

QC consists of product-oriented activities that focus on the final outcome. The objective of quality control is to ensure the product design meets the requirements and specifications of the customers. If QC should find an issue with the end product, it ideally should be resolved before the end-customer receives the final product. To put it simply, QC includes everything involved in making sure that a product or service meets the standard quality requirements and the demands of customers.

It involves testing the effectiveness and outcomes of an actual product, such as executing software after the software development process to find and fix defects before making it publicly available.

The activities of quality control are product oriented. Testing refers to the actual testing of a product to meet QC standards. This may involve using or stress testing the product or seeing if the actual service results match the expected results. The process identifies problems in the product or service before it goes live. In software testing , this ensures the identification of errors, bugs, and defects in software.

Testing software involves executing a software component to evaluate its properties. Testing activities are also product oriented. Team collaboration. This Agile approach works best in cross-functional teams where members tightly collaborate and have broad skillsets as testers are involved in the development process and developers — in testing activities, creating a product with testability in mind.

It involves getting feedback from real end-users and improving the quality based on these reviews. A formal technical review FTR is an activity performed by software engineers to reveal functional and logical errors at the early stages. An FTR is a group meeting at which attendants with certain roles ensure that developed software meets the predefined standards and requirements.

The best time to run an FTR is when you have a mature product. But it depends on the type of review. A typical FTR requires a team of engineers with specific roles as speakers, reviewers, or producers. At the end of each meeting, a review report should be prepared to answer the following questions:.

A formal review or review meeting is a presentation given by the author of a product. The main objective is to introduce the product to the rest of the reviewers. As a result, all the participants have to accept the product, suggest modifications, and discuss timeframes.

A walkthrough is a meeting during which reviewers examine the source code of the product referred to, its design, and documented requirements. A walkthrough meeting is held to detect bugs in the code. The author of the code is often present to answer questions. An inspection is a review session that determines the additional properties of the product according to the requirements. While formal reviews and walkthroughs are used for bug detection, inspections are held to expand initial standards, or check to see if previous bugs are still present.

Conducting formal, technical reviews helps to prevent errors and reduce the risk of logical and implementation errors in advance. Here are some ways to create comfortable work conditions and keep your team happy, engaged, and productive. Testing consists of various activities that are performed by different specialists. To organize a smoothly-run testing process, roles are specified at the planning stage in a test plan.

There are six common roles in QA:. Each role has its own set of skills, responsibilities, and tools to operate with. To set a proper interaction with your QA team and understand specifics of each position, learn more about QA roles and their features. If you want to achieve high-level quality goals, you need to build trusting relationships between a QA team and developers with respect for each other.

Also, it would be better to search for people with coding skills. Obviously, engineers will respect such testers more. They will also be able to code some of their own testing tools. A QA lead has to recognize the progress of the team and individual achievements of its members at team meetings.

It will encourage other specialists to do better work in the future. Provide the necessary pieces of training for your QA specialists to expand their knowledge. A QA team lead should organize brainstorming sessions to create floods of collective creativity in the team. It will help invent new techniques for solving an existing problem.

Collocate your testers and developers to improve communication efficiency. Face-to-face communication will help avoid misunderstandings and share effective solutions to problems encountered during tests. You also need a good team leader who will be able to effectively share feedback and ideas with testers. QA managers should encourage team members to speak about existing problems and other issues with the team that could impact productivity and efficiency. Retrospective meetings held by the entire development team at the end of each sprint or iteration are one of the ways to discuss achievements, problems, and plans for further work.

QA leaders should be flexible and open to new strategies to best serve their teams. In product development, we have user personas to identify a perfect customer or a typical user for your product. QA teams use personas to identify where and how to seek a bug. To ensure that your application meets user needs, consider engaging end-users in testing. End-user testing or user acceptance testing traditionally comes at the final stages of software development.

Engaging end-users to test your application can help discover bugs that might not normally be found. User acceptance testing UAT can be done in various ways. According to Usersnap , there are 5 UAT types:. Alpha and beta testing are done at the pre-release stage. Alpha testing is carried out by internal stakeholders at the early stages of development. Business and end-users are often involved in alpha testing performed in the development environment.

The feedback from internal teams is used to further improve the quality of the product and fix bugs. Contract Acceptance Testing is a type of UAT done to check if developed software meets the contract requirements. Regulation Acceptance Testing ensures that software complies with legal regulations.

Operational Acceptance or Production Readiness Testing is done to check if an app is ready for production and usage. It verifies if there is a proper workflow arranged user training, backup plans, security checks, etc. Black Box Testing examines software functionality without seeing the internal code.

That means testers are only aware of what an app should do without knowing how. This type of testing allows test teams to get the most relevant results comparable with end-user testing.

User acceptance testing helps to identify problems missed during unit and integration tests. Considering the importance of end-user insight, check the following tips to organize UAT properly:. Find interested users. Getting just any user into testing is not a suitable option. Find a subject matter expert interested in testing your software. That will give your QA team and developers explicit insight into your design, features, and functionality. Coach testers. Keep in mind that you ask a subject matter expert for help, not a QA engineer.

For that reason, create comfortable conditions for an end-user to get acquainted with testing requirements. Coach them to deal with a certain testing environment or tools that you use.

Reduce the usage of test tools. Your end-users will be thankful if you give them a less complicated tool for testing and reporting their observations. Consider using web-based environments like Plutora or Usersnap. Respect their time. Organize the process to be as convenient for them as possible. The simpler the testing requirements you create for them the better.

Any type of software developed has its User Documentation UD. UD is a guide or a manual on how to use an application or a service. So, make sure you test your user documentation as well. Manuals for your software can also be tested by a team of end-user testers. It is also a good practice to include user onboarding in your app. User onboarding consists of a set of methods to help users adapt to the interface, navigation, and guide through the app in general. For example, check Canva — a designer tool for non-designers.