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Apr
2015

Challenges faced by a Software Tester

Posted in : Software Testing Career

Testing is not one job, it is a set of activities that requires multiple skills. As they say, there are two sides to a coin, Testing is not all hunky dory.

Testers face lot of issues and there are multiple challenges to be overcome before you could say that “Testing is Done”.

In the process you might get the feeling that there is impossible amount of work to do and it can never be done in time or you wouldn’t get good feedback ever after all the hard work.

Some of common challenges a tester may face one time or the other:

1. Dealing with Conflicts with Developers

Big challenge. Requires very skilled tester to handle the relation with developers positively.

Testers have to be firm and polite at the same time and he must discuss about the problem based on facts and should never question capability of developer.

There are simply hundreds of excuses developers or testers can make when they are not agree with some points. For this tester also requires good interpersonal skills, troubleshooting and analyzing skill.

2. Communication Issue

Tester’s job is really not easy especially when he is not articulate enough.

During the different stages of testing and in different scenarios he must get involved in discussions with discussions with SMEs, Developers, Project Managers, Test Manager, fellow testers, Customer Support Teams and sometimes Customers and Program Directors.

Surviving the Challenges of Software Testing goes beyond the technical skillsets required for effective testing.

He should be confident and clear in his thoughts and in a position to put forward his thoughts in clear, firm and precise manner.

3. Working with remote teams

It can be a challenging task to work in a team where team members are in different geographical locations.

When your work depends on someone or we need to get clarification on something and he/she is not available on office network, then tracking becomes difficult and doing it on daily basis can be frustrating.

Now a days there are tools available which can make sharing information easy and quick. Keep looking for ways to improve communication.

4. Time Zone and Cultural Difference

When you are required to work with teams sitting on different end of the globe, then it could be very challenging task to work without impacting the timelines.

Sometimes it takes almost double the time to get an issue resolved because of time zone difference.

Language barrier could be another thing which might hamper the product quality and delivery especially when most information exchanges and discussions happen over the conference call.

5. Scarcity of Resources

There will never be enough hardware resources and testers for a project.

Lab resources are always shared between teams and a tester’s effort might be shared between different projects/teams.

Challenge is to plan well and make the most of available resources and inform the higher management on the scope and risks in the beginning.

6. Lack of Testing processes and Tools

Absence of testing tools, processes and guideline may work well for you if you have well qualified and experienced tester working for you.

What about when he not around and you want replace him with some inexperience tester.

Processes and Tools are mostly for new comers in the team so that they don’t have be spoon fed and they come to speed as soon as possible on their own and minimal mentoring is required saving every one’s time.

It is going to be very challenging for relatively new testers to work in such environments.

7. Time and Tight deadlines

“We want to ship this product by this weekend. Could you complete and give green signal before that?” This is arguably favorite line of Project Manager to tester.

However, when this order comes from boss, tester simply focuses on task completion and test coverage and quality of work takes backseat.

There is huge list of tasks that you need to complete within specified time. This includes writing, executing, automating and reviewing the test cases.

Challenge is to understand the risks and plan in such a way that there is minimum impact on quality.

8. Ambiguous Requirements

Sometimes testers are responsible for communicating with customers for understanding the requirements.

What if tester fails to understand the requirements? Will he be able to test the application properly? Definitely No! Testers require good listening and understanding capabilities.

Get the clarity on requirements and their testability upfront.

Also Read: Software Tester Skills, Role of Software Tester

9. Domain Knowledge

If a software tester is to be successful, he must have expertise in the business domain and in the architecture on which the software is built.

Understanding the exact business requirement of the end user is the biggest challenge a tester may face. This will enable him to certify the software before exposing it for client approval.

Knowing the domain will help the tester break communication barriers, appreciate the business need and relate to the impact of the system in the overall scenario — even when it is not explicitly stated.

10. Poor Documentation

General idea behind poor documentation is “if you’re not operating the product, you’re not testing”

It’s so easy to skip all documentation or write base minimum information and dive right in to the testing.

It normally results in productive testing and nobody misses the documents if all is goes well. Until…few year later, when the programmer makes a little change to a module that hasn’t been tested since. The team says the change is high risk and asks you which tests you executed three year ago and how long it took.

Hence, design and test teams must record better documentations in the absence there might be no reference point to go to and for a getting simple piece of information we may need to do a lot of research.

11. Dynamic Requirements

Frequent changes in requirement is a big challenge for testing.

A requirement change might have small impact on developer where he has change only some if-else block to incorporate it but for test it means writing new set of test cases, creating new automation scripts and making corresponding changes in regression suite.

12. Quantity Vs Quality of bugs

It is challenge to get the right balance, while we want to find as many bugs as possible it is also required to maintain the quality in the issues raised.

Testers may get carried away and raised bug with improper severity and priority.

It is challenge to inculcate the idea in testers that bugs should be raise keeping the product quality in mind instead of personal performance metrics.

13. Skills

Knowledge of the testing concepts, test principles, test processes and tools is important but these days everyone is looking for tester with some knowledge of programming and most important of all inquisitiveness.

Because of tight timelines more focus is on automation so that known tests are automated so that more time could spent on exploratory testing. These skills are not in abundance, hence it is challenge.

14. Testing the complete application

Is it possible? Answer is NO, exhaustive testing is a myth expect for very small application designed with limited capabilities.

There could be millions of test combinations.

It’s not possible to test each and every combination both in manual as well as in automation testing. If you try all these combinations you will never ship the product.

15. Regression testing

When project goes on expanding the regression testing work simply becomes uncontrolled.

Pressure to handle the current functionality changes, previous working functionality checks and bug tracking becomes too overwhelming for tester.

You simply cannot put each and every test case in the regression suite, and situation becomes all the more tricky the frequency of running the regression test suite increases.

Challenge is to be selective and maintain the relevance and quality of the test suite.

16. Automation testing

Many sub challenges – Should automate the testing work? Till what level automation should be done?

Do you have sufficient and skilled resources for automation? Is time permissible for automating the test cases?

Decision of automation or manual testing will need to address the pros and cons of each process

17. Reuse of Test scripts

Application development methods are changing rapidly, making it difficult to manage the test tools and test scripts.

Test script migration or reuse is very essential but difficult task.

There are no free lunches and facing these challenges can only make you a better and skillful tester.

There is not much you can do for many of these issues like resources and timeline, all you can do it utilize whatever is available efficiently.

Try to come up with light weight processes to get everyone on board and endorse skills and practices that helps in achieving quality. Plan well and be interactive, simply do your best.

Accept mistakes, take criticism in your stride, learn and improve continually. Never sit idle on blocked issue. Involve others and discuss solutions.

Prepare and provide daily reports on progress and highlight impediments and if needed escalate it.This approach will help you gain knowledge and confidence. You‘ll be appreciated and rewarded.

———

If you are starting your career in software testing, this should give you fair idea on what to expect on the job. If you already on the job, please provide your comments on the coverage of challenges faced.

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