Hello fellow project managers, business analysts and stakeholders! Welcome to my blog! I am excited to share a new topic with you on why testing is critical within project management and when developing and implementing a solution. Hope you enjoy this post!
When it comes to managing a software development project, testing is one of the most critical areas within the overall project lifecycle. Whether you like it or not, testing requires a lot of effort, dedication, focus and consistency. What do I mean by this? To be able to test a software solution, you need to know what exactly the software is designed to do, how it will do it, and what actions it will take in addition. How do you think that so many organizations have websites where you can select an item, add it to your shopping cart and then check out so easily? That entire process required a significant amount of testing to reach that point! To the same extent, software testing is important for the same exact reasons and more!
Software testing can be a tedious process for some, but its critical to the success of a project as well as the organization that is implementing the software solution. Below, I have explained why software testing is critical to your organization and how you manage projects:
- Making sure that the solution works as expected: from the very beginning aspects of testing a software solution, at a bare minimum, the solution should work when testing basic types of scenarios. This means that testers should utilize the requirements gathered and finalized in the initial aspect of the project and utilize those business requirements to come up with testing scenarios. All of the business requirements should be met when testing the scenarios individually as well as when conducting end to end testing.
- Identifying and resolving bugs based on common scenarios: the common scenarios that end users will work with to utilize the solution should be flawlessly executed. Whenever one of the commonly identified user scenarios has a bug within the software, it’s considered a critical issue if it’s essential to the business in how it operates or functions. Whenever a bug has been identified in one of the common testing scenarios, it is important to work with the development team to resolve it. Once it has been resolved, my personal recommendation is to test the entire solution again for all scenarios. Why do I believe in this philosophy? Unless you personally know how the software code works, it is much better off to test all scenarios again (as well as end-to-end scenarios) to confirm that the bug fix did not break another portion of the software solution.
- Identifying errors and bugs based on non-common scenarios: once the testing team has tested all of the common types of scenarios for the software solution, it’s also important for the testing team to confirm that “negative” scenarios are also working as expected. This typically means taking on the task of trying test scenarios that may not be common, such as submitting a web form with all blank fields, hitting submit multiple times to see what happens, and/or entering special characters into a field and seeing how the solution processes the web page. These types of scenarios can be infinite and it’s hard to capture all of these scenarios in a single testing cycle. However, it’s important to try to test the system to the extent where a kid may try to accidentally break it.
- Increasing the quality of the system: Testing is essential because it will increase the quality of the overall solution that is deployed to the end users or consumers. By being able to develop a holistic testing approach, a project manager can save an organization millions of dollars down the line. Users that find software having bugs or issues will not want to use it, which can lead to poor reviews as well as poor ratings by consumers. By having a strong and 360-degree testing approach, the software can be thoroughly tested, which will enable the least number of bugs to be deployed to the users.
- Mitigating security and performance risks: Within software testing, there is a component of testing referred to as performance testing and security testing. Performance testing refers to how fast the solution works with end users as well as from the back end where the software is processing data based on a user’s entry. Security testing is critical, especially if users will be entering payment information or storing personal identifiable information into the website or software. Both of these types of testing is critical to making sure the solution can be utilized effectively and safely by the consumers.
- Saving money down the road: With the proper approach and execution to testing, organizations can save potentially millions of dollars down the road. If the software solution is not tested extensively and thoroughly, it can potentially lead to lost lives or even livelihoods for consumers. There are countless examples where the proper testing was not done for various products (e.g., cars, software, websites, etc.), which led to millions of dollars in lawsuits and a ruined reputation for an organization. Testing is critical to catch potential issues that can come up and resolve them before a consumer has to face any issues that can potentially impact them.
- Increased trust with product’s users: By taking on a thorough testing approach and making sure that the product works as expected within minimal errors or issues, the organization will have an increased sense of trust with consumers and end users who regularly use the solution or product. At the end of the day, testing the solution and resolving defects to the solution or product will enable users to trust the product as a go to source for whatever the product’s intended use. If the testing approach is incoherent or not well thought out, it can lead consumers to feel a strong sense of distrust with the product and not wanting to purchase or utilize any of the organization’s other products as well. Perception is everything, even if you make toothpaste and run a website.
- Better customer satisfaction: At the end of the day, if your solution is for the end customer, then you want to make sure that the customer is satisfied. Satisfaction will not only come from the product that they will purchase from you, but it includes the entire consumer online experience. The consumer needs to be wholly satisfied with whatever solution or product they are utilizing and it should be defect free for them. If the consumer is satisfied with the software solution or product, they are more likely to purchase other products or services from the organization.
As you can tell based on the above, testing is critical to project management and organizations overall. Without sufficient testing and defect resolution steps, it can lead to a disaster for an organization and cause consumers to lose trust in the company’s products and services. A thorough testing approach is necessary to make sure that the solution is extensively tested to meet the consumer’s requirements and provide value to the consumer at the end of the day.
I hope you enjoyed this post! How do you come up with the testing approach for your project? Leave us a comment below!