Happy Halloween everyone around the globe! Surely the day before yesterday you’ve enjoyed to the fullest yet successfully warded off all your ghastly fears. Halloween is one of the days for which many people start preparation and decides their costumes to look scariest to outdo their peers or friends at parties and events. But fears are not just confined or limited to ghosts, witches, and even vampires.
Has anyone ever asked software engineers and tech persons what real-life fears are? What is the scariest creature that haunts them daily? If someone ever has made efforts to ask them, then he/she might know the biggest fears or nightmares in the life of a software engineer or software tester are those hidden, little creatures in the software that has the power to eat all their efforts of developing a product, alive. Their fears are limited to the quality of the software products and apps which they develop after incorporating heavy efforts and investing all their assets.
A failure of a software product or application after carefully evaluating it and investing as much as possible to make it according to the user expectations is one of the worst nightmares that is enough to destroy the peace of the software tester’s mind. Unlike manufacturing a daily routine commodity, developing or creating software is not an easy task. Despite taking the precautionary measures to protect software from failure or defects even then there are some vulnerabilities left untreated that end up as deadly for software testers.
Let’s discuss in detail some of the nightmares that haunt software testers more than the expensive costumes and get-ups of people to haunt their peers on Halloween.
Use of Automation & tools, still considered as a challenge – Many of the software testers still believe that automation is not just a simple word, it has a lot of hidden challenges. However, automation or use of quality assurance testing tools is a great helping hand for many software development firms, if utilized appropriately. Quality assurance personnel in organizations need to understand that their one decision of showing reluctance towards automation can make their jobs more difficult as they have to spend extra hours in finding and hunting errors and defects, managing test cases, and manually making reports. However, these all tasks can be reduced via just incorporating tools like an appropriate bug management tool for tracking, hunting, recording, and managing defects efficiently, a test management tool for managing and reporting all the tests, etc.
The only challenge that will be encountered by quality assurance professionals when it comes to implementing automation is just the learning phase of using or utilizing automated testing tools to their fullest.
Software or application responsiveness – As a successful software tester, you’re not just confined to being responsive towards all your tasks and duties but it also mandates you to make the application aptly responsive for end users. And an application or software is said to be responsive when it’s functioning without crashes, not taking enough load times and enabling ease of use for end-users.
We all know that in today’s age of innovation and technology, with the invention of mobile devices, mobile apps have become a new norm in society. To provide an excellent user experience of mobile apps, you as software testers are responsible to test the usability or functionality of apps before they get launched or released in the market. Software products and applications must be compatible with multiple platforms and devices as users utilize the same product or app on different devices.
Deadlines and unrealistic schedules – Want to know the reality from where the problems take birth? Why are testers always scared? It is unusual to blame software testers solely for being unable to make a software product 100% defect-free. Why? Because there lies a chain of people who are involved in the procedure although the major task rests on the shoulders of testers, yet developers, code reviewers, test managers, and other staff also play a big role. For instance, if you as a test manager or leader will continue to assign unrealistic schedules and ask your team of testers to complete the long and time-consuming task in the given period, then you are just digging a pool for your failures. And when a tester becomes unsuccessful in meeting the deadlines you start the blame game (another thing you do to light the fire of your failures).
When a tester has to deal with untrained resources – Another thing about which most of the software testers fear is to deal with the resources that are not trained enough. For instance; you can take an example of an intern or trainee tester that has recently joined your team. Newbies are fresh with limited skill sets and no expertise in the domain. It is then challenging for a team of experts to manage their tasks as well as explaining each procedure to the new team members. This will cause you to invest your valuable hours as you have to often stop in carrying out your testing procedures to describe in detail to the newly appointed.
Lack of clear two-way communication – A good teamwork means proper coordination and cooperation, that is only possible if there is clear and appropriate communication between all the stakeholders, without having any barrier at every stage of the development process. This needn’t happen physically; keeping open channels of communication between stakeholders virtually will also be enough in most situations to sort out any issues as they arise. When the stakeholders are not in touch with the project details, mistakes that could have been avoided or resolved early on can transform into deep-seated problems which will simply burden testers with extra work. Tying in neatly with the above, it is pointless to have open communication channels if the quality of the communication between people is poor.
Is there anything that we’ve missed? If you’re a software tester and reading this article, jot-down all your testing nightmares and work through every fear of yours daily, to get your job done with peace of mind.
