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- Verify the requirements in the first place – Sometimes the client doesn’t know exactly what he wants. He may give you some ideas and you have to help him to finalize the formal requirements. People sometimes take the word of the client as an unalterable opinion but we should have an extensive discussion with the client before we come up with a framework.
- Ask a lot of Questions – How would you test for issues or improve the software, if you don’t understand the requirements thoroughly? It is essential to understand the requirements properly. So, do not stop yourself from asking the required questions. You can help other team members by being proactive in the meetings.
- Build a file of test cases as soon as the requirements come – Do not wait for the task to be assigned to you for testing. Start developing the test cases based on your understanding, as soon as the requirements come. This will give you enough time to go through all the possible test cases and you can directly execute them when the task is assigned to you.
- Breakdown the tests into small fragments – While testing a case for a big functionality, break it down into multiple test cases instead of testing the sub-functionalities together. Note down the results for each one of these small test cases. This way it will be very clear and easy to reproduce.
- Follow the Agile system – Agile system of software development allows the QA team to test the system at every step of the SDLC. Make a schedule for testing right from the beginning which will allow you to catch the bugs quickly saving your time. Also, it allows the software to include innovative functionalities built on top of the basic requirements. Provide daily updates so that the development team can work on it as soon as possible.
- Focus on User Experience – The main purpose of testing is to improve the user experience. Therefore, it is important to focus on user experience rather than focusing on test cases entirely. Testing doesn’t mean to strike off things on a list, instead, the aim should be to improve the software. To do that, put yourself in the shoes of the end user and see things from his/her perspective.
- Think technically – Having a technical thought process will enable you to discuss software from a technical point of view with developers and managers. You would also be able to understand the limitations under which they work. You can even provide suggestions that could help to improve the software, especially in terms of response time, etc.
- Be sure about the security of the test environment – Today most of the companies are using cloud solutions for testing as it provides good resources at affordable prices. But cloud comes with its own set of vulnerabilities especially when a public cloud is used. Companies should invest in building their own test infrastructure that provides security and benefits in the long run.
- Do regression/retesting often – Whenever new functionality is added or bugs are fixed, do the regression testing to identify any issues that may arise from the changes made. This is the way to be sure of the fact that the system is working as required.
- Remove the code added only for testing purposes before deployment – When there is a need to add a piece of code to make testing possible, the code must be removed from the main code when the testing process is complete. For example – When the email of the tester is added in order to check whether the emails in an application are being sent or not. Tester’s email should be removed from the CC, once this is tested successfully.
- Sharing the test scenarios with the team in advance – If you have developed the test cases in advance, you can share them with the development team. They can do their work keeping in mind these scenarios which can save the time used in bug finding, fixing and retesting. Preventing errors is always a better approach rather than finding and fixing them later.
- Customize and review tests – Every project has its own unique features according to which the tests should be carried out. Your tests should be flexible so that you are able to customize them as per the requirements which can change many times. The old tests may not be applicable anymore.
- Analyze the priority of the task – Sometimes there will be multiple tasks assigned to you, you need to decide which one to work on based on the priority. Analyze the Priority and severity of the task for example – Login functionality should have higher priority if a user needs to login before accessing anything. It is necessary that login functionality works correctly in this case.
- Automate your tests wherever you can – Automation saves an immense amount of time. It helps in regression testing. You just have to run the script and it will find the bugs. There are several tools in the market for testing automation such as Selenium, Appium, etc. Selenium is by far the most popular tool in the market. It supports several languages like Java, Python, C#, and Javascript, etc. Remember, it is not always possible to make scripts for every functionality such as user experience test.
- Adopt the two-level approach in test automation – When a commit is made for some important functionality, QA might be asked to do a quick validation test for the changes made. It is not always possible to test every commit as it will take too long to do that. Instead, follow the two-level approach – At level one, the tester can do sanity testing for rapid validation to the commits and at level two, a more exhaustive regression testing can be done that runs automatically at night or when you are busy with something else.
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