Well-Written Test Documentation Is the Basis for Efficient and High-Quality Product Testing

The number of products in the IT market is skyrocketing, which increases their competition. And for a product to be successful and used, it is necessary to conduct effective testing to make the product competitive. But even thorough testing can lose its effectiveness if it is not supported by well-written and organized test documentation.  

What is test documentation?

Test documentation is a set of artifacts created either before or during testing. It helps the team to estimate the effort, test coverage, and number of resources, and evaluate the results and risks of testing. 

Each team builds the number of artifacts for itself, according to the processes and methodology of software development. But the most popular artifacts are: test plan, test cases, and bug reports.

A test plan is a document that describes the entire scope of testing work.

It should be used when preparing for the release of critical or large-scale functionality. It gives a clear idea of the testing process, planning the amount of resources and time required, and helps with reporting and risk assessment. If the test plan is poorly written or not followed, there will be incomplete test coverage, confusion in the team, loss of time and resources, and problems with evaluating the results, which will lead to a poorly tested product.

A test case is a base, a professional tester’s documentation, where a scenario for testing a particular feature and the expected result are written. 

It is considered good practice when test cases are created in parallel with development, even before the functionality has been pushed to the testing environment. 

In my practice, I’ve encountered projects that had well-described test cases and were updated periodically. This made my learning curve on the project fast and regression testing showed good results. 

In turn, if the test cases are created in small numbers or are not relevant, then this will lead to a long training of a new tester and will lead to missed bugs during regression testing. 

A bug report is a technical document that contains a description of the situation or sequence of actions that led to the incorrect operation of the test object, indicating the reasons and the expected result.

 When a tester finds a bug, he or she should analyze it, find the cause and, if possible, the task or functionality that could have created the bug.

It will help them to clearly describe the bug found so that the developer does not spend extra time analyzing and reproducing it. Don’t forget to add credentials and screenshots that show not only the UI, but also a fragment of the console/network – this will make life much easier for the dev team. There are also situations before the release when critical bugs remain unfixed, and the tester can agree to postpone the release until they are fixed.

If the bug report is poorly described, it can lead to misunderstandings between other team members. For example, the developer will not understand how to reproduce it or where to find it, and will ask the tester for help, and it will be a waste of time.

Taking this information into account, we can draw a conclusion:

If the documentation is poorly written or incomplete, it can cause big problems for testing and for developers when fixing bugs. Testing will be chaotic, the team will not know what to test, which requirements are critical, and which are secondary.

 In turn, well-formulated and organized test documentation works like “Clean Code” in programming. It improves project understanding, test transparency, and sequence of actions, speeds up work with it, and makes the project high-quality and competitive in the IT market.

Swan Software Solutions has many skilled Quality Assurance team members. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help your company with its QA needs or other technology services, contact us to schedule a free assessment.