All software engineering areas face lot of challenges during execution. So, I would say, as a tester, never ever get surprised when you face challenges in software testing. But, it is also a hard fact for tester community that most of the companies are not testing oriented. Management always do a good appraisal of development teams. Sometimes, appreciation goes to development teams only.
Few points that I want highlight to management / project managers & development teams:
- If development teams are so good / intelligent, then why you need testers to test the application.
- Remember – by testing a build / release, testers evaluate the Quality of work done by developers.
- During every regression testing, lot of bugs got re-opened (what quality of work was done by developers)
- Sometimes, a customer release requires 5-7 regression testing cycles. Think Why?
- During these 5 to 7 regression cycles, developers made so many mistakes. Testers help to prevent the defect leakage to customer. But, at the end, if even if 2-3 minor bugs goes to customer, everybody from top to bottom will catch testers. Just imagine, with one mistake of a tester, everybody will catch testers from the neck. Are testers bound to make not even a single mistake? But, developers can repeat the same mistakes multiple times.
- Most of the times, developers eat tester’s time.
- I never understand why management always keep a difference between developers and testers. You might be having answer to this question, but, I’m not.
Delivering a Quality product is a joint responsibility of developers, testers & other relevant stack holders. If some bugs, goes to customer, remember:
- Developers also did a unit testing
- An expert solution architect designed the system.
- Some senior developer also reviewed the code / database
- Customer also did a UAT – then, application goes live & bug appears
- Product managers / business analysts review test cases (and test cases are executed by testers)
Now, apart from testing done by testers, these five steps were also performed which were not able to detect that bug. Then, why all blame came to testers.
The major root cause of all the above mentioned problems is only one challenge – “Lack of testing culture in the organization”. To build a testing culture, management need to play an important role.
Second major challenge in the testing is the lack of skilled testers. Again, the major root cause for this is “Wrong Management Decision” at the time of selection of testers. As usual management do not want to invest in testers. This results into incomplete, insufficient and ad-hoc testing throughout the project life cycle. It is also true that sometimes, testers may add complications in the testing of a project due to their unskilled way of working.
There are few other challenges:
- Developers did not communicate what the build is about. Wake up testers – If developers didn’t communicate about what this build is about, ask them before testing.
- Remember, complete Testing is never possible. Testing is always done on sampling basis. Selection of test data needs good proficiency in test data selection methods.
- Sometimes, testers and developers fight with each other on bugs and take the things personally rather than professionally. It becomes a major challenge for project stake holders.
- As project keep on growing, regression testing becomes challenge. For these kind of situations, both the testing & development teams need to work together to do a proper impact analysis.
- In most of the organizations, at the time of effort estimation, testing team is not involved. Testing team is always asked to test the build in a particular time. If you are facing this challenge, raise your voice to relevant stack holders.
- If requirements are not properly communicated to you, ask for detailed requirements. Never ever assume anything.
- Management always expects high return on investment for automation. Do a proper study for “whether to go for test automation or not”. Communicate timely to all stack holders.
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