Bxdty

I work at a small company as a web developer. There are 10 developers and 2 QA personel.

There are no product owners or project managers. There is one analyst and the CPO. The CPO is quite busy as he's the only one who takes on this role for several projects. He doesn't have time to write detailed specs and many things are verbal.

There is lack of documentation or specs so often people only know how the product works in detail by looking at the code.

I don't see this as a problem but the QA department does.

The QA person doesn't like to test anything without detailed documentation. It takes extra effort and time for me to take time to write these documents which will inevitably change again in the future.

The QA person isn't quite as devoted to the job as I am and he's been working here and on the project with me for at least 2 years and he still doesn't commit it to memory how the product is supposed to work.

He has difficulty sticking to any testing without detailed documentation.

I could just test everything myself (I already do) but I don't like it when bugs come back to me after they have been in production. I don't feel that this QA process is overly effective.

How can I cope with this situation?

Product specifications need to be written down.

How does anyone know if the software is doing what it's supposed to be doing if it's not specified somehow?

There is always debate and discussion about how features should work. These decisions need to be written down or they are forgotten about (or people just argue about how things are supposed to work).

Lack of specifications becomes very problematic when product behavior changes. How does QA know if a behavior change is intended or if it's a bug?

A requirements document is a contract between all stakeholders in a project:

• Developers use it to know what code to write


• QA uses it to write test plans


• Sales and marketing use it to know what features are in the product and how they work


• Documentation uses it to write user manuals

See it from his point of view. Unless functionality is defined, he has no way to judge if it's working. When he says it's a bug, you can come back with "it's an undocumeted feature". This is not at all uncommmon for small companies who can't justify the expense of a business analyst. Someone needs to put the requirements down in writing.

The question is if that's you, or your boss, or who?

As a developer, you probably shouldn't be doing this. It should be whomever gives you the assignment.

My suggestion is to get with him, put your heads together and come up with a solution, which might be a proposal to the boss to provide this documentation, or to hire someone who has that responsibility.

"I could just test everything myself (I already do) but I don't like it when bugs come back to me after they have been in production."

If bugs come back, then either you're not testing, or your testing isn't good enough.

There are two issues here; One, that you are pushing code to production without testing and QA (two different things), and two, that your QA person requires specifications before he'll test things.

There MUST be a specification for any change done to the system; and verbal changes aren't worth the paper they're written on (thanks, Yogi Berra!). You need to 1. change to a ticketing system so that every change requirement has a user requirement which the QA person can then test against. You should 2., also start writing unit tests, and have an automated regression test suite for use before any code is committed to production. Code reviews would also be nice, but sometimes not feasible for really small fast moving teams.

Just these two simple things will vastly improve your teams code quality and QA workflow. And it won't slow down your team; having a stronger requirement at the start means that everyone involved knows the requirements of the change, so you won't spend as much time rewriting code. It's always more cost-effective to put the design time in at the beginning of the project.

Tell this to the QAer...

There are ALWAYS requirements - even if they are not formally documented. They may take some time to discover and list, but they exist. Here's one approach to finding those "hidden" requirements.

First, look for general requirements and work to document them. Some of these requirements come from previous versions of the application, some come from generally accepted usage. For example:

• Must run on platforms x,y,z (perhaps because those platforms have always been supported)


• Must use abc database


• Must be able to process n records in m seconds


• Must be at least as fast as release n - 1


• Must not consume more memory (or other resources) than release n - 1


• Must not crash


• Must not corrupt data


• Must use standards relevant to the platform (standard Windows UI, for example)


• Must be consistent with relevant laws, regulations or business practices


• Must not have any misspellings


• Must be grammatically correct


• Must incorporate the company's usual look-and-feel


• Must be internally consistent


• Must work in particular locales


• Must be complete when expected by the stakeholders (perhaps for some event, such as a Beta)

If it's a web site or application, some additional requirements might include:

• Must not be missing any images


• Must not have any broken links


• Must basically work the same in all browsers which are officially supported by the company

Then, interview the project manager or developers and find out what they intend to do with this release. Document the intentions and use them as requirements.

Solicit input from anyone who is a stakeholder in the project. Share everything you find with everyone and revise it as needed.

Does the product have a Help file or a User Guide? If so, that's a good source of requirements.

Do Sales materials exist for the product? Certainly the product should do what these materials say that it does.

Sometimes, writing all of this up as assumptions can go a long way toward gaining a consensus as to the "real requirements" you can use to test against.

Once the system is at all testable, do some exploratory testing. As you find "undocumented features", add them to the list of topics to be discussed.

Find out if the product is internally consistent. (This is an area I find to be very useful) Even if I know nothing at all about a product, I assume it must be consistent within itself, and within the environment in which it must operate.

Look for external standards within which the product must operate. If it is a tax or accounting program - tax law must prevail and generally accepted accounting principles must apply.

Ideally, all of these issues have already been considered and written into the formal Requirements documentation which is handed to you. But if not, don't give up. Dig in and discover!

You could point him to my blog for more tips: https://strazzere.blogspot.com/

Programmers are expected to make sure everything works before sending to production. It's no good writing code but not testing it sufficiently. The tester is here just to validate your efforts and sign it off, but it's still up to you for testing your own code.

I could just test everything myself (I already do) but I don't like it when bugs come back to me after they have been in production.

Test your own code, please don't leave the responsibility to other team member. The bugs would always have to come back to you because you're the only person who can fix it. The tester has no programming language for debugging your code.

You should never assume your tester has the job of debugging your code. If there's no spec, it's up to your manager to handle that. Please take the responsibility.