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More than $3.7 trillion is spent on enterprise IT systems every year in the US, with the figures expected to rise with every passing year. Many organizations depend on software to run, meaning faulty software can result in big losses.
As a developer, your biggest concern should be ensuring you deliver quality. The only way to ensure quality is by conducting thorough tests of all aspects of an application before release.
Here are five tips that can help you improve your software testing strategy.
1. Track the Metrics That Matter To Your QA
If you get one reported hotfix from a client, it may not be so much of a cause for alarm. But if they keep coming from different clients, it is maybe time to rethink and improve your QA strategy.
The best place to start when looking to improve your QA is by tracking the metrics that matter. In other words, you need metrics that provide you and your team with actionable information. These metrics are your QA test’s effectiveness and your QA team’s effectiveness.
This guide on the five most important quality assurance metrics can be a worthy read to help you grasp what metrics track entails.
2. Create a Solid Plan
Everything starts with a plan, and so is your testing strategy. Before testing, you will need to set up a well-defined and documented plan. An effective plan should comprise a test policy, a quality management plan, a test strategy, a test plan, and test cases.
Having a solid plan ensures that you always have a point of reference that you will use to measure how close or far off you are from your target outcome.
3. Strike a Balance between Speed and Effectiveness
Every developer wants to have an end product that is flawless, effective and works at a fantastic speed. However, you cannot have all of them at once, which is why developers have a customer support team to solve emerging issues.
You must strike a quality-speed balance to ensure you don’t spend all your time testing and developing, which can start eating into your bottom line.
That means as long as your product meets an acceptable level of quality, you may go ahead with release and work on updates even as you track its performance in real-life applications.
4. Be Detail-Oriented
When running a test, every little detail matters, no matter how insignificant it may seem. The small issues can indicate a much bigger problem underneath them. It is not enough for you as a team leader to be detail-oriented; let every member of your testing team know that every detail matters.
It also helps to have your testing team run multiple tests at a time while being on the lookout for new issues in every test run.
With different team members running various tests and documenting the noted glitches, you can come up with a better picture of the fixes that may need immediate attention and those that can wait.
5. Focus On Your Team
Your testing strategy can only be as good as your testing team. The best place to start is ensuring that you hire right. If you already have a team, you may consider investing in their training.
Doing this does not only ensure you get the talent you need, but it is also an excellent way of boosting employees’ morale.
Besides hiring and upskilling your team, ensure that your team members are assigned roles based on experience and expertise. Assigning roles based on expertise and experience means you get more done in less time.