ETESTWARE OUTSOURCED TESTING SCOPE & DEPTH

In our latest dive into the annals of past eTestware articles, we happened upon a piece that provided tips on explaining the scope and depth of the required testing in an accurate way. The emphasis was on ensuring that this was conducted before any contracts are signed, and you can read the full blog here. Carry on down the page for a summarised version…

The article, published in September 2017, began with a theoretical proposition positing that the decision to outsource testing work had been made, with the question of how to accurately describe the scope of the required testing being the first to tackle – before you sign the contract.

How do you accurately describe your testing needs? How can you ensure that additional charges are avoided? Only by answering these can you ascertain whether or not the anticipated charges will match your requirements for scope, depth, and coverage.

This will help you save money whilst completing additional testing.

The article went on to outline key pointers for success:

• Submit an accurate description of the testing you desire, and how far you wish that testing to go

• Be certain that you are clear on what you want to pay for and what you expect in return

• To ensure an accurate evaluation of test scope and depth, assemble a small group of development team members including members from both QA and development, preferably using the people who are carrying out the actual testing work and creating code

• Be specific; the more details included, the more accurate the valuation, scheduling, and implementation

• When planning testing scope, focus on test environment support and define what type of testing is functional and the level of test coverage

• Produce a risk analysis, allowing you to organise your testing by priority

• Select the test scripts or suites to be executed, along with the number of tests required

• Produce a test strategy outlining and ordering the test cases to be executed

The article then adopted a ‘Q&A’-style format:

What if I do not have any existing test cases for the testing team to look at?

Send them the online help menu documentation (after first verifying that it is the latest version).

What if I do not have any documentation?

Create user personas and user stories describing the functionality and business intent for each area within the application.

At this point in the piece, a very important message was reiterated: Ambiguity is expensive, so make sure that the documentation you supply is as precise as it can be.

The next steps are to confirm that the team has access to the network plus any available testing tools, plan for support at times where the test environment may go down at a time when the internal team is not available, and finally, verify your test strategy.

The team must know exactly where they are in the process, and when testing is to be considered complete.

eTestware is part of theICEway ecosystem of companies, a collection of IT specialist brands whose combined expertise has helped IT teams for clients in healthcare, cruise, travel, and retail for more than two decades.

Top TipOutsourcing has always been an efficient and effective method for those seeking to either supplement their existing resources, or to initiate projects that may otherwise never be tackled. At this moment in time, with so many companies furloughing their teams or worse, outsourcing has become an even more desirable option.