Make Testing Remote-Friendly

Time suddenly took a U-turn and did when we least expected it. While just some time ago, millions of people were travelling across the globe, now we are forced to stay at home for our good.

If expert opinion and news analysis are to be believed, remote work is expected to become the new norm at least in the near future. 

We need to equip ourselves to better adapt to the situation in the best way possible.

In this article, we have compiled some tips for remote QA testing teams to keep testing effectively.

1. Communicate

With teams working from physically different situations, the aspect of remote working that has the most impact is communication.

Schedule a short meeting daily to plan the work and practice sharing work status with your team. Make sure every team member is involved in it. A good practice is to share a summary of the discussion in case someone misses to join.

It is important that a remote QA testing team provides timely feedback. For testing specific tasks, always communicate the completion status on time when possible. A better way to do it is to update your teams on the progress of your work using a test management tool. Team members can access and check the status of the tasks anytime, anywhere. This will be particularly helpful if their tasks are dependent on yours.

2. Make your testing reports clear and concise

Some part of a tester’s daily activity will always involve reporting. Whenever a bug is found they will be logging bug reports. When executing test cases, they share execution reports. The execution reports will also be of different types – for eg. functional testing reports, performance testing reports, regression testing reports, release certification reports.

To make the reports useful while working remotely, they must highlight the issues and convey the test behavior. This prevents any to and fro between people to understand what the reports mean. This also helps teams to stay productive while working remote.

3. Automate workflow where possible

Depending on the type of project you are testing, and the role you are in, you would have a lot of workflows already automated or many might be pending.

To improve the quality of remote testing work, try to automate the processes that would help other team members perform better.

For example, having an automated CI/CD workflow where after every check-in, a regression test suite is executed automatically will save testers and the developers a lot of time.

4. Reduce potential blockers and individual dependencies, where possible

With remote work, all team members cannot be available at the same time. Keeping this in mind, individual dependencies should be removed as much as possible.

For eg, if there are test automation scripts or test cases – they should be hosted at a location that is shared with all. The hosted locations and folder structures should be easy to understand and communicated to all beforehand.

5. Enable selective access to the testing machines on need-basis

There are organizations where testers need access to different machines and servers for testing. These machines could be hosted on the cloud or hosted in the organization’s headquarters within a private network.

To keep the security intact, enable access to these testing machines and environments with the people that need to access it. Make sure to not share any potentially sensitive files/data on these machines.

6. Use secured tools

Now when people have no other way than to work remotely, people are also using various tools for making remote work easy. They could be messaging apps, meeting apps, task management tools, or collaboration tools.

Though it’s good to use such tools for better productivity and reduced communication barriers, ensure that your tools are always secure. You need to keep yourself and your internet self safe and secure.

If you have not already, you should think of investing in a test management tool that allows you to host and manage your manual & automated test cases, test execution reports, and analysis.

Testsigma is a unified test automation platform that allows you to:

1. Automate test cases on the cloud.

Testsigma allows you to automate test cases in simple English via NLP. These test cases are created and hosted on the cloud and can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

2. Execute test cases on a cloud-hosted test lab that has 1000+ screen sizes to test on.

Testsigma has an in-built test lab with all the latest devices and browsers that you might need to test on. It can also easily integrate with BrowserStack and Sauce Labs.

3. Get comprehensive execution reports and access them anywhere anytime.

The execution reports are created keeping the most important stuff highlighted and the needed references attached which prove to be useful for testers as well as managers.

4. Easily integrate with other CI/CD tools you might be using.

If you have an already set up continuous integration/DevOps workflow, Testsigma can integrate seamlessly with it.

5. Debug your failed test cases on the cloud.

Testsigma attaches screenshots, video recording of test execution and logs to execution reports. It also supports pause and play of test cases for better debugging experience.

Testsigma offers On-Demand Automation Expert Services  to address complex situations and growing requirements. The dedicated expert will work with you remotely and in the time zone you are comfortable with.

We are in tough times. Some of us could seem better than others but the fear of the unknown is worrying us all. So, let’s understand each other and have empathy for each other too, every moment of the day. If someone is not available, let’s understand and ask them when they will be available instead.

In place of calling for a meeting without any notice, ask for time when they are comfortable and then schedule a meeting. If people don’t turn up, it’s ok.

Make everyone feel inclusive and comfortable. Respect and appreciation might be something that might be needed more frequently in these times.

Know More: Tips for Remote Testing