Testing is an important phase before launching of the product. Testers face many drawbacks during this phase that might delay the release and reduces the efficiency considerably. Perfecting the product is done in this phase and apart from the regular difficulties, there are a lot of traps present. In this post, we are going to see in detail about the five of the most important hurdles in software testing.
The direction of testing:
This is one of the most common hurdles a tester will have to face. When a product is entering a testing phase there will be numerous opportunities and possibilities to approach the product. Especially if the product and technology involved are complex, then its direction is lost. This totally sabotages the process at its entirety. As the deadlines approach the process stumbles at many places.
To deal with this issue, you need to look at the existing bugs and segregate them based on the criticality. Having a conversation with the project managers and getting their opinion on the critical factors helps a lot in designing your direction of the testing. Analyse the review documents, user manuals and guidebooks and get an idea about the information available to the end user. Tester has to think at the point of end users.
Priority of the issue:
You might have a checklist to approach the bugs and defects but you might just miss the obvious. Situations like these can be very embarrassing not only because you missed something that is so basic and so obvious but also because it happened when you were actually busy religiously following the test cases to find things just like these.
In order cross this hurdle you need to prioritise the issue. And rather than following the test cases and test matrix as it is, ask yourselves which test case is important? Explore the things which are not covered in that test case. Check if it covers the critical functionality. Also, check if an alternative is available. This pretty much clears this hurdle.
Deviation from Goal:
Sometimes the team might be explaining about a feature and way it has to work, but you might not exactly get what they convey. This might cause a deviation from your testing goal. There is a high chance that if you missed the exact path of the feature you might test the same in a different way and the result might not be pleasing to the users.
To overcome this hurdle all you need to do is just question the developers. Try to understand the core benefit of the feature. If you can understand the core benefit then you can approach the feature in a better way.
Dilemma Bug:
Dilemma Bug is nothing but you come across an issue but you aren’t sure that if it is a bug or not. What happens most of the times is the bugs you leave as nothing to worry will be seen a hurdle by the users.
Overcoming this hurdle is simpler than many others, trust your instinct. If something is fishy then obviously it will present itself in front you. All you need is to observe the same. Reporting such bugs is far better than ignoring on some assumptions and later proves to be a major bug.
Mental Block:
This is one of the most common hurdles for any tester. There comes a situation where you don’t have a clue on what to test or how to approach the same. This condition of mind block stops your ability to find new bugs and defects. You will be redundant for a while. This is just a temporary stage though.
This hurdle can be easily taken care. All you need to do is opt-in for a pair testing. Pair testing is nothing but two testers combine to perform the operation. By this, you don’t have to worry about the block as you will have another person to take care of pushing the envelope. Also stressing on thinking out of the box works perfectly at this. Also, you can change the approach of testing which gives you the push needed to move from the block.
The above mentioned are the most frequently faced hurdles by the testers. As mentioned these hurdles have to be taken care of to make the product bug free. By following the precautions explained the process of the tester can be made easy and efficient.
Kumaresan T,
Testing Team,
Mallow Technologies.