Does QA stand for quality assurance or question answer?
What do you as a QA do when you get a story to test? You probably like lot of other QAs start testing what requirements/user stories are provided to you.This is indeed the common mistake that testers commit. Instead, QA are expected to be like editors, who assist to polish, refine and enhance acceptance criteria. Testing demands creativity, innovation and thinking out of the box.
Art of testing involves thinking from user’s perspective. Testers should put themselves in shoes of users and come up with different situations.(Understanding of business model helps you to understand user expectations). General format that can be used to identify answers is “What result is expected, if..……….. ”. Good domain knowledge plays a big role here. Next step is then to map the situations to requirements and find if they are missing, unclear, incorrect, inconsistent or invalid. In any of such cases, QA needs to speak up, discuss with team and take followup action steps.
Also to prevent mistakes and defects, clearing all aspects of the feature are important. Before one starts testing, focus on basic “W” questions:
→ Why would customer appreciate this feature? Why not something else?
→ Who will be target audience?
→ What are most important scenarios? What are risks involved?
→ When should the feature be consider ready to release?
→ Where should related documentation reside?
→ Will it make upto user’s expectations?
Answers to these questions gives you insight about the feature. QA is not only about executing the test cases or writing test scripts. It’s also about clarifications, spotting out the flaws, collaborating with team, knowing your customers etc.
But is it only in QA’s plate to focus on these sections? No, absolutely not! It’s team job indeed. Every team members must also keep these viewpoints in mind which will help team to progress. On top, a tester must motivate this to be done in early software lifecycle.
My tip for all testers: Be courageous and open to discuss. Challenge the already provided user stories if you have different opinion. Ask questions in case of doubt. Don’t stick talking only to your technical team for clarifications. Reach as many stakeholders you can to get insight of your product and feature.Do it all in constructive manner :)
Remember, the better questions a QA asks, better testing he can perform. Don’t forget to involve your team for this :)
#SoftwareTesting #BeCuriosLikeAKid
