Something a thing that unites every beginner and expert is that they keep learning. No matter where you are in your professional journey, there is always more to know. Our team constantly studies the masterworks of software testing services. But the best insights come from hands-on experience.
So, let us share a couple of QA wisdom nuggets from a particular case – live testing a holiday home booking platform.
Executing tests in a live environment is both dangerous and rewarding. Testing alongside real users’ operations can activate errors, freeze the system, compromise security, etc. At the same time, checking the platform in a test or staging environment can’t perfectly replicate authentic scenarios. So while testing in production has significant risks, when done professionally, it offers some invaluable benefits:
In our case, we’ve assessed all website elements to determine where live testing would work and where it could affect the product. Determining what aspects to cover in different testing environments allowed the team to interact with the product confidently.
Regarding testing in production, securing essential functions and a positive user experience is vital. There are a few insights on how to do that correctly.
In this project, user prioritization also called for making a test entity. Typically, a test persona helps developers and QA engineers better adapt to the point of view of a particular customer group/representative. It’s like mapping out the most valuable functions, action patterns, and behaviors for specific audiences (e.g., for us, it was property owners and renters).
Persona-based testing is a practical approach to user-centricity that lets QA experts:
When it comes to constructing a “test puppet,” besides thorough research, you also should:
In production, testing should strive to replicate natural customer conduct. To support this aspiration, you could organize QA efforts to first handle user-critical areas. We ran functional, cross-platform/browser, and UI testing on the booking platform. So we focused on universal primary touchpoints and features particular user types find most important.
Here, you should commence with validating functions that allow customers to use the app freely and drive profit. For us, the hierarchy of tests took the following form:
As you may have noticed, the testing roadmap is shaped as a genuine user journey through the website (from registration to talking details with a property owner). This approach to test structuring motivates testing from real users’ POV and provides a logical step-by-step pipeline.
Another important aspect to note is that you often don’t expect to notice major issues during tests akin to registration. Some QA services might take such instances lightly. But here’s an example of how a seemingly minor error can have grave outcomes.
When testing the registration process, a QA specialist noticed that the system had no real password complexity validation (it allowed users to set 1-symbol passwords). A customer encountering this may have some concerns:
And that’s how this tiny flaw could substantially impact the churn rate. Thus, don’t underestimate the potential consequences of the “easiest” tests, and always be prepared.
For compatibility testing, we prepared a support matrix outlining all environments that needed checking. Beginning with browsers and platforms that were prevalent among the app’s users allowed the team to quickly secure them first. After, testing moved to mobile and later specific cases, such as in-app browsers. So, what insights can you take away from this?
Continuing the thread of user-centricity, when it comes to UI testing, it’s paramount to know app specifics and reinforce principal components. A house booking service uses maps to showcase locations, hence, position display should work accurately. Also, customers need to effortlessly view, scroll, and interact with property images (magnifying, pressing the left/right buttons or swiping, saving/reposting, etc.).
Proper documentation makes everybody’s work more efficient. We’ve been a part of different projects with various degrees of documentation preparedness. Across each, the central notion is that low-quality records lead to low-quality products due to the:
Even using bug trackers, whose reports are part of testing documentation, improves workflow by monitoring, prioritizing, and tracking defects, enhancing communication and knowledge sharing. That is why when no bug-tracking system is present, QA professionals should aim to document their testing efforts as clearly as possible.
Quality is not absolute. You can define it in hundreds of ways. But it has one implicit attribute that echoes across every definition – a quality product is one that customers enjoy. So whether you’re working with a booking platform or supply chain management software, remember to always have the user at the heart of your project.
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