One Way to Deal with Reducing Testing Time

One Way to Deal with Reducing Testing Time

In my previous post “Reducing Testing Time and Blaming Testers”, I raised the common case of reducing testing time in many software development projects and why this happens. As I mentioned in the post, such decision could affect the quality of the software and testers at the end will be blamed for not finding software issues. The question is: How should testing team deal with management decision to reduce testing time which means that testing time will no longer be enough to conduct all test cases?

Our testing team have faced a similar case in one agile project. During a meeting and when we were informed about management decision to reduce testing time, we immediately raised the risk that not conducting all test cases might result in software issues showing at customer site. We agreed with the management that we will reduce the scope of testing and instead of conducting all test cases, we will focus only on testing those areas of the software which got changed or affected by the change. As a result, our testing team was able meet the new deadline for testing and to ensure that the software is of high quality.

All the best…

4 Comments

Amandeep Singh

about 8 years ago

Great one, Anwar. This is something which I come across a lot and ideally, this is exactly what I do. Either I try to buy some extra time emphasising on the side-effects of not performing complete testing due to reduced timelines. Or, if the business is really keen due to release due to their commitments to stakeholders, risk-based testing is what comes out as a winner. Cheers!

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Anwar Bosbool

about 8 years ago

Thanks Amandeep for your comment and sharing your experience.

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Andrei Asavoaie

about 8 years ago

Hi, Quick question: in this case are you satisfied with the level of quality you are assuring over this project with this new approach? To me, testing only the areas of the software that "should" be affected by the change sound kinda risky :) Have a nice day !

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Anwar Bosbool

about 8 years ago

Thanks Andrei for your comment. Yes you are right, it is risky and that is the reason it is called Risk-based testing. However, this is the best we can do as testing team since testing time is reduced and yes we are satisfied. Of course if project manager decides to give us more time for testing then we will be happy to do more testing of other areas of software and assure more quality. Have a nice day too!

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