What All should you Test in your Healthcare Apps?

Technology has touched all aspects of our lives and healthcare is no different. Now at the touch of a button you have access to anything that you wanted to know about eating healthy, staying healthy, doctors and their availability etc. Whatever you can think of, related to, healthcare is now available in the form of an app.

A developer designs an app based on the ideas that he has. However, before this app is launched in the market, it needs to be tested and made foolproof. So, if you are looking to enter the healthcare field with an app, there are some things you need to test in your app.

Read more here : What All should you Test in your Healthcare Apps?

Agile Automation Testing - Automation in Agile Methodology

As more and more businesses are embracing agile development and testing, automation has become the norm of the day. For cutting down the time of development and time to market, automation has emerged as a critical component as it helps maintain agility throughout the development cycle where various teams cooperate and collaborate, with an emphasis on continuous improvement.

Let’s take a look at how automation plays a key role in Agile environments.

Read more here : Role of Automation in the era of Agile

Load Testing in Agile Environment - Do You Know it All

Load testing in agile environment is being extensively used in most software development scenarios in order to help developers to respond to changeability. However, the industry still withholds certain misconceptions about load testing. Think you know it all? Read on to be amazed!

Importance of performance testing in Agile Methodologies

Most developers and code testers prefer load and performance testing in agile development methodologies over traditional approaches as it proffer opportunities to access the direction all through the development lifecycle. Moreover, there are certain benefits of using agile methodologies,listed below:

• The widely accepted approach to development significantly decreases testing costs of the software
• It helps developers to build the right software by rectifying the bugs during initial stages
• It empowers load and performance testing teams to incessantly plan their release to optimize its value right through development, enabling them to be as competitive as possible in the market.
• Specialized problem solving units with well - Load testers - are entities which receive inputs through sensors and act on through effectors.

Some important attributes which must be followed during load testing in agile environment are mentioned below:

• The involvement of active user is imperative
• The testing team must be allowed to make decisions
• Requirements develop, but the timescale remain fixed
• Step-by-step release and iteration
• Gathering requirements at high level; visual & lightweight
• Complete focus on the incessant delivery of products

Read more: http://techarcis.com/load-testing-in-agile-environment-do-you-know-it-all-2/

6 Ways to Improve Performance of Distributed QA Teams

It is quite common for organizations to have multiple product lines. Take the case of Microsoft. The brand is massive – Windows and Office being the two biggest product lines. Each product line has plenty of associated applications to deal with, and needs a dedicated sprint cycle and release cycle. This goes deeper in terms of inherent dependencies. The same could be the case with your organization. Your QA team could be spread across multiple product teams with equal divisions. And to top it, they work 10 hours ahead of your time zone! To ensure effectiveness, you have even set up a Scrum team that actually works in different time zones.


However, at the end of the day, some questions still shade your mind- How to maintain consistent communication link with QA team that is distributed? How to make sure Scrum environment is giving effective outcome? Are there any innovative processes that QA Testing Solutions Provider can take help from to attain their objectives?


Well, we have compiled a list of 6 ways to improve performance of your distributed QA teams.


Read more - http://techarcis.com/6-ways-to-improve-performance-of-distributed-qa-teams/

Script-less Test Automation – Is it Really Script-less?

Script-less automation, this term is most popular nowadays in the world of test Automation. The companies who have such script-less automation tools / frameworks promote that it allows the business users to comfortably automate the business scenarios without having much knowledge on the tools and their underlying languages. So, is this approach really script less? Does the importance of technical automation testers have come down? Is there no demand for more experts in the test automation tools or the underlying programming languages? Not really.

Let’s understand what is this scriptless automation all about and how is it helpful in present scenario of test automation. Script-less automation is an abstraction layer over and above the Application Under Testing (AUT) and the automation testing tool, which consists of the hundreds of functionalities perform various actions on the AUT to test the applications. These functions may be common technical functions like “Open”, “Close”, “Save”, “Minimize”, “Maximize” or other common arithmetic functions which we perform. These can also be specific to the AUT, to test the functionalities on the applications – like creating a user, modifying a user, adding roles, opening an account, editing the details, closing the account etc. Though these script-less tools have several inbuilt functions/actions mainly keyword driven, but still we need the Test Automation experts to create new functions/actions or modify existing ones coupled along with the abstraction layer. Basically script-less frameworks/tools screens over and above all of these which may help the end-user or business user to automate the test cases.

Read more: http://techarcis.com/script-less-test-automation-is-it-really-script-less/

Is It Time to Say Goodbye to Manual Testing?

Automation helps you save time and make ideal use of your resources with constant and ongoing test executions. However, there are certain testing scenarios where automation does not prove handy.

How important are these scenarios? Is automation great enough to warrant making manual testing a thing of the past?

Over the last few years, the prestige of testing has increased, with particular stress being laid on software automation testing. What is so special about automation that teams and organizations find so desirable?

I have shared my insights in my complete article. You can read the complete piece on =>> https://www.techwell.com/techwell-insights/2015/10/it-time-say-goodbye-manual-testing

Metrics and Measures to Find the True ROI of Test Automation

Products and new features roll out in competitive market demands shortened quality testing cycles and time to market. With today’s new age applications, performing tests manually like regression testing and running the test cases multiple times can be laborious and time consuming. And one cannot compromise on the quality of the end product at the same time. So, automation in testing arena plays a vital role and become inevitable in IT industry. By way of automation, these test cases take lesser time to run the regression testing cycles.

Automaton regression testing not only results in saving time but also costs, especially if the test cases don’t change frequently and regular test cycles are required. Regular maintenance activities like patches or upgrades over the application’s lifetime can result in working features to regress; meaning regression cycles can be run for any change which happens in the environment. But having said all that, automated testing cannot be beneficial at all the times. We need to analyse the situation in terms of ROI and see where the automated testing is truly benefiting us.

Read more here : http://www.softwaretestingclub.com/profiles/blogs/metrics-and-measures-to-find-the-true-roi-of-test-automation

Why is Root Cause Analysis Extremely Important?

When developing a product, while it is extremely difficult to maintain quality of the product due to its complexity and shorter time to market, it is also important to keep the cost low to stay competitive.It becomes essential for the software developers to consider variousaspects while developing any product. Though, all the guidelines are abided, problems still arise in the software in form of defects. There are several factors for the defect to arise and product to fail such as, human factor, communication failure, poor design logic, unrealistic development timeframe, lack of skilled testing, poor coding practices etc.  Besides this, the difficulty intensifies if the same defects recur during the development cycle of the products either new or enhanced versions. The solution lies in conducting the root cause analysis of the defects and then taking corrective actions so that they don’t recur.

What is Root Cause Analysis?

At the very basic level, root cause analysis is a methodology used to find the underlying cause of the defect. As it signifies to product development, Root cause analysis is a systematic procedure for putting the defects in categories and analysing them before release, after the release or both. WhenRCAis performed properly, it shows the points in the development cycle that are causing the main and recurring defects. Root Cause Corrective Action (RCCA) is when corrective actions are applied to solve the problems that occur during RCA. The corrective actions are carried out far upstream in the procedure as possible, as catching failures upstream prevents rework, saves time and money by not letting the problem to take place.

How Root Cause analysis helps reduce recurring defects?

Firstly, the defects are logged and documented. Secondly, the defects are reviewed and analysed using the root cause analysis techniques. But before Root Cause analysis is performed, a Pareto graph is outlined to show the defect type with highest frequency of occurrence which becomes the target. An example of defect classification in a Pareto graph is shown below:

According to the Pareto graph, the category for which the highest numbers of defects are found should be paid attention to at first.

The Root Cause Analysis of a defect follows the below key principles:

• Minimizing the defects to improve quality: the analysis must lead to making changes in processes which help prevention of defects in the early stages and ensure early detection.
• Utilizing local and third party expertise: the people who really know what went wrong should be there to analyse processes along with third party experts. A good debate ensures all possibilities are taken care of, analysed and the best possible action is taken.

With these guidelines, defects are analysed to find their origins. A collection of these causes will help in conducting the root cause analysis in effective manner.

Why Root Cause Analysis is extremely important?

 

The main benefit of RCA is that it finds the fundamental errors in the development process, enabling teams to enact right measures to fix the problems and stop them from recurring ahead. Hence, there is lesser rework and fewer defects in the final product.

1. Reduced cost: the cost of fixing defects increases later the defects are found in the development process and if a defect makes it into the final release, customers may never buy the product again, resulting in loss of revenue to the firm.
2. Identify failure: It points RCA is mainly helpful for teams that think they have apt development and QA procedures but still face recurring defects. Obviously, something is broken but what, why and where are the questions that need to be answered. RCA helps answer these questions and find the real (root) cause of the problem and not just the obvious (direct) cause.
3. Improve safety and reliability: As root cause analysis helps reducing the number of defects in future, it can be mainly beneficial to firms in quality critical industries where product reliability and safety are mainly important.
4. Enhance time to market:  On finding the root cause of a defect and taking the subsequent corrective action, releases of the product take less time in testing and the product is released in the market sooner with lesser uncaught defects.

The benefits of adopting the Root Cause Analysis process to prevent defects are enormous viz. reduces development time and cost, increases customer satisfaction, reduces rework effort thereby decreases cost and improves the quality of the product.