Being able to write concise, easily comprehensible software testing reports is an important skill for software development team members to possess, particularly those in quality assurance, development, and support. Poorly written software testing reports can make the development process more difficult and less productive.
Imagine a client asks if their app is ready for launch and based on your assessment, everything is working correctly. A couple months later, the client complains of critical bugs, which weren’t apparent until the app was in production. Now the client is demanding your development team to fix the issues, while you’ve already started devoting resources to a new project.
This type of situation could be avoided with a thorough testing management phase, which includes comprehensive testing reports. Let’s examine the how’s and why’s of software testing reports.
One of the reasons why development teams receive complaints after a release is a lack of software testing. A proper testing report is a record which contains all test activities and test results. It helps in determining the current status of a project and analyzing what corrective actions need to be made.
Agile testing is a testing practice that adheres to the standards and rules of agile software development. Agile testing strategy isn’t linear, but continuous and adapts to software updates and changes in scope.
For example, cyber security software is always evolving so an agile testing method would be better recommended for software reporting in cyber security applications. Learn more cybersecurity courses offered by Udemy.
Testing is not a separate activity, it’s part of the developmental effort.
As the Agile manifesto puts it, “individuals and interactions” are more valuable than “comprehensive documentation.” This isn’t to imply that reports don’t have their place, however it’s essential to pick cautiously when and what to archive. It’s a key parity to strike and one you need to check to ensure you’re addressing what’s necessary.
In contrast, the waterfall testing strategy is able to adhere to a more strictly linear development process, and is useful for apps that are built with “Point A to Point B” in mind.
To make the report detailed and specific we need to look into its content.
It should include
All these points collectively make a report that properly communicates relevant information between all parties.
While making a report, you should think about who it is for and who will need to understand it.
Stakeholders include:
Test Plans can take any number of forms. Some examples are:
Going past functional testing
To achieve proactive continuous application improvement, it is important to go past functional testing. Application performance management tools, such as Stackify Retrace, allow for a continuous feedback loop at each step of the SDLC. Using a code profiler, like Stackify Prefix, in your development environment and Retrace APM in your nonprod, qa, and prod environment helps catch bugs at the source.
Stackify's APM tools are used by thousands of .NET, Java, PHP, Node.js, Python, & Ruby developers all over the world.
Explore Retrace's product features to learn more.
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