Just transfered into the software testing department. Need advice

[Lazarus52980]

I have worked for the last 6 years or so in the software support department at my place of employment. I did well there, and enjoyed talking to customers and helping them with issues.

However, as of this week, I have been transferred into the testing/Quality Assurance department, testing our company software. This is new for me, and I thought I would ask fro advice here...

Does anyone here do software testing, or have any opinions on the best way to go about it? Any and all advice is appreciated.

 

[Ken g6]

Have you been provided with test cases? If not, have you been provided with requirements specifications that you can turn into test cases? Do you at least have a test case repository?

 

[Lazarus52980]

Alright, I guess I should provide more info huh?

About 50% of the job is running test scripts when new major versions of the program are ready to be released. That is fairly straight forward, I do what is written on the script and if it works, I pass it, if it fails, I write up a bug on it.

The other 50% of the job is more complicated. Its looking at bugs that the programers claim to have fixed, and looking at new enhancements that have been written up, approved, and enacted and verifying they are doing what they were supposed to do, and functioning without bugs.

Its that 2nd part that I am nervous about. I am sure there is some sort of methodical way to go about doing this sort of testing, but I am not yet sure what I should do, or how best to get started...

 

[EagleKeeper]

Alright, I guess I should provide more info huh?

About 50% of the job is running test scripts when new major versions of the program are ready to be released. That is fairly straight forward, I do what is written on the script and if it works, I pass it, if it fails, I write up a bug on it.

The other 50% of the job is more complicated. Its looking at bugs that the programers claim to have fixed, and looking at new enhancements that have been written up, approved, and enacted and verifying they are doing what they were supposed to do, and functioning without bugs.

Its that 2nd part that I am nervous about. I am sure there is some sort of methodical way to go about doing this sort of testing, but I am not yet sure what I should do, or how best to get started...

There should be a procedure used to replicate the bug.

1. First replicate it using old S/W
2. Second: ensure that the bug is squashed using current S/W
3. Third look at the comments created by the the developer to ensure that the fix was properly documented.
4. Fourth: run a full suite of tests that cover that general area of the application to ensure that there is no unexpected side effects. I have seen developers fix a bug and induce another outside of their scope.

For the enhancement,

1. Understand requirements
2. ensure that the application meets requirements
3. Th look at the comments created by the the developer to ensure that the enhancementwas properly documented.
4. Fourth: run a full suite of tests that cover that general area of the application to ensure that there is no unexpected side effects.
5. Create new testcases to validate the requirements

 

[Lazarus52980]

There should be a procedure used to replicate the bug.
Third look at the comments created by the the developer to ensure that the fix was properly documented.

This is one part that I don't get a lot of. Sometimes the "documentation" is "Updated code" or "fixed issue". I am not sure what I can do about that though...

 

[pauldun170]

Do you know what suite you will be using?

 

[Lazarus52980]

Do you know what suite you will be using?

I had to look that one up.

Near as I can tell, we don't have one and/or I am expected to come up with the testing method and test cases myself. Unless I have totally missed it up to this point, we have nothing like that setup yet.

Any advice on how to start one from scratch?

 

[Ken g6]

So you don't have a test case repository? Most such software is rather expensive. I did set up a Free one in the past couple of years:

FitNesse (which I didn't write) plus Mastiffe, which I wrote most of, for the company I still work for.

The bad news is I'm probably too busy to support it.