Tick Tick Tick! Time’s Up!
You may have heard these words before in your life if you belong to the software development or software testing domain. Often it seems like the role of techies is just like the participants who have participated in a cooking competition where each second is being counted. No extra times for improvement. No doubt we are slaves to the machine-like clock. This is particularly true in the case of the software domain i.e every single tick of the clock is enough to haunt the software testers and developers. These time limitations can prove to be a great cause of generating stress in anyone’s life especially if your life is already difficult because you are a tester and you have to make sure the software product quality standards remain high.
This is not just the case of software professionals instead every single individual from any other domain or industry is under the stress for one reason or the other. Stress Management is now becoming a hot topic at the professional and industrial level. No doubt software testing professionals are also known as the Daredevils because the profession itself needs patience, communication tactics, and investigation abilities. But sometimes when stress at the workplace is so high, we forget about every possible solution offered and often become the victim of stressful situations. We all are aware that software testing is a critical yet the most important step when it comes to the development of a software product. It is important to make sure the product quality, performance, and security are up to the mark. That’s why software testing often makes the lives of software testers dull and challenging. Testing is the basic activity aimed at detecting and solving technical issues in the software source code and assessing the overall product usability, performance, security, and compatibility. It isn’t only the main part of quality assurance; it is also an integral part of the software development process.
Through this article, we want to enhance your knowledge base about all the software testing pits and their effective solutions to make your lives stress free. So why wait for more? Let’s get started.
Some of the major pitfalls of the QA job that leaves quality assurance team members in stress are;
Facing hard times Investigating Bugs/Errors
No matter how proficient and skilled a team of software testers you have, a variety of challenges come across the way of investigating and detecting bugs. And if any of the bugs are left untreated mistakenly or unintentionally then the whole effort of conducting software testing gets wasted. If the errors are not treated timely then the chances of their exploitation by the ever-hungry hackers will become higher as well. In short periods, it is therefore impossible for the manual testers to alone perform every single task. Moreover, not every single task of the project demands human involvement just like hunting bugs/errors in the software testing project. This is when the need for proper and appropriate QA testing tools like defect tracking or defect management tools becomes mandatory. The best way to hunt maximum bugs, even the hidden and complex ones is to track them by implementing the use of appropriate software testing tools that are well aligned with the business requirements. The use of these tools makes it possible for the team members to focus on the tasks that are more valuable and demand a high level of human involvement.
Effective Communication – a real pain in the neck
It’s not inappropriate to say that “A little can get done alone while together we achieve a lot”. Software testing is a process that relies merely upon teamwork. And what accounts to be perfect teamwork? For sure teamwork is synonymous with words like collaboration and coordination. A perfect software testing process means having effective communication with the client and within the team members as well. From managing test cases to detecting, fixing, and reporting bugs, software testers need an effective communication channel that makes it possible for every team member to be on the same page i.e have access to the project details and status.
Many organizations have implemented the use of various software testing tools like Jira Test Management tools that have an innate feature of making internal communication between teams easier via a single platform. And these tools have proved to be valuable to tackle the communication barriers while strengthening the software testing process.
Time is always a great matter of concern for QA team members
Often the clash is because of the limited time or unrealistic schedules set by the management to meet the testing tasks. This is one of the worst things and biggest problems in most of the Software testing life-cycles and it impacts on Quality of the product/project. And the icing on the cake is when the quality of a software product gets affected due to the unrealistic deadlines, managers and leaders start playing a blame game with software testers. This results in low morale and increases the stress levels of a software tester.
However, the perfect solution to tackle this situation of time constraints is having an effective and efficient quality assurance tool in place. Tools are great at handling tasks that require less human involvement and are not top priority concerns. This resultantly saves time for the software testers and enables them to focus on the other tasks that are a high priority.
Ending Note
Although software testing is a critical and crucial process nothing is impossible to tackle. Software testing poses threats and even makes the lives of testers very difficult but there are some software testing tools as well that are specially designed to ease the life of testers. Whether it’s a communication gap or managing test cases, whether it is hunting defects or dealing with the short deadlines, software testing tools serve all the concerns of testers and act as a true pain reliever for the software testing teams.
