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8 Main Challenges in Software Testing and How to Overcome Them - 1

8 Main Challenges in Software Testing and How to Overcome Them

  1. Why Run Software Testing for Your Digital Product
  2. QA Challenges You May Face
  3. Summary

A software quality assurance test is one of the most critical stages of any product’s development process. With its help, you can define functional and non-functional issues like slow loading speed, launch crashes, visual imperfections, and more. Most importantly, software testing helps you detect potential problems before the launch. Thus, you can ensure you’ll release a bug-free, convenient product that meets your target audience’s needs.

Despite the numerous benefits of product quality validation, you may also face particular challenges in software testing process. Therefore, awareness of these possible issues is essential, especially if you lack relevant product testing experience.

This article will cover the most significant testing pitfalls and describe how you can overcome them to ensure a smooth and successful product launch.

Why Run Software Testing for Your Digital Product

Let’s clarify why software testing is important in more detail. Some of the most significant advantages of product checkups include the following:

  • Higher level of data safety. When testing your software, you can detect flaws in your security system and prevent possible data leaks.
  • Increased customer trust. After testing, you will provide a convenient, well-functioning, secure app. It will definitely create a better image of your brand, showing your professionalism and reliability.
  • Greater performance. High load speeds, quick response times, and well-optimized media instantly showing up on the screen define your solution’s convenience for end users. Luckily, software testing covers those aspects, too.
  • Time- and cost-efficiency. With efficient testing, you won’t spend extra resources on unexpected post-release bug fixes and additional maintenance services.
  • Improved development. Thanks to software testing, you’ll know which features and metrics need optimization. Also, you can analyze them at practically any development stage (even the earliest ones). This way, you will prevent bugs and issues from affecting other parameters later on.

Thanks to extensive expertise in software testing, we at UTOR understand its importance. Thus, we recommend setting up a testing process for each digital product you plan to release. But, of course, you may face particular difficulties along the way. We gathered the most significant ones in this article. Now, it’s time to learn how to manage those challenges hassle-free.

QA Challenges You May Face

Unfortunately, the benefits of testing software come along with certain challenges that may occur at different development stages. Although you may not face these particular ones, staying alert and reacting rapidly to eliminate them is critical. Let’s see which issues you may stumble upon at the three main development stages: pre-launch, pre-release, and post-launch.

Pre-launch 

At the pre-launch stage, you may lack communication and a well-defined strategy with your team. In particular, you may need more understanding of the key product goals, required testing, allocating responsibilities, and more. 

Pre-release 

During the pre-release phase, you prepare a new, polished version of your product. And here, you may experience management issues while working on necessary updates and bug fixes. You can also discover that you lack metrics or KPIs to verify if the testing results are appropriate or need further improvement. But that’s what you should know exactly before releasing a new product version.

Post-launch

Finally, after you launch your product, post-release maintenance and support will be your key challenges:

  • New technical bugs may occur. 
  • Users may notice visual or functional flaws you haven’t yet detected. 
  • The support team may not perform their tasks properly, etc. 

All those issues result in additional costs, re-training or substituting the product team members, and extra code reviews (also requiring additional time and budget investments).

Now, let’s discuss the issues our team at UTOR considers the most widespread and significant. We will also explain how to avoid these software testing challenges to streamline workflows and ensure a rockstar product launch.

No strategy or understanding of the point B

A well-developed, elaborate testing strategy and understanding of expected results (i.e., point B of your plan) are necessary. They help realize the main problems of your product, the tasks, and the responsibilities of each QA team member. Without a clear direction, you risk wasting your budget and failing the deadlines. That’s because you don’t know what and when you should do to achieve quality results.  

Moreover, teams sometimes don’t even understand what to start with and which tasks to complete (i.e., point A). Hence, it’s necessary to outline the key goals and initial steps. 

That’s when you know you’ll need a test plan, strategy, and list. Each of these guidelines will show what you’re missing. Besides, you will understand what you should communicate to your team before getting to work. Now, let us explain the meaning and purposes of those documents.

Test plan

A slick strategy usually comes from an elaborate test plan. Here are the main points it should reveal:

  • Parameters that need testing (scope and requirements)
  • Appropriate time and methods for testing particular metrics like functionality or performance (schedule, test environments, etc.) 
  • The description of the core process automation aspects (tech stack, processes allowing for automation, etc.)
  • The expected results
  • The deliverables of the testing process (reports, test cases, the code itself, etc.) and how to access them for further usage

Test strategy

In turn, the test strategy is an integral part of the test plan that highlights the following: 

  • The criteria for the start and end of testing
  • The testing approach explains the steps to providing full test coverage for the product. For instance, we receive a build from developers to run a smoke test. Then, we test the available features and the product’s behavior after update regression. Finally, we verify its user acceptance with the help of real customers. Thus, we can look at a product from different angles and detect bugs missed during the primary check);
  • Test design that explains the techniques, the required types of testing, etc.
  • Defect reporting (what an issue consists of, what aspects it impacts, the required solution, etc.)
  • Test depth (i.e., how complex the testing process is for a particular parameter)

Test list 

A test list is a breakdown of all the checkups required for a digital product. It usually includes specific categories based on your product’s features, processes, and more. It’s like a helping hand for the testing team. When using it, they don’t just see how many tests they need to run. They also see which ones have failed or succeeded. A test list isn’t the most crucial element, but it can save you some time planning new tests and monitoring your progress.

At UTOR, we will develop a custom test plan for your product. Next, we’ll work on an efficient test strategy together. Note that it usually varies from project to project while working with outsourced teams. That’s why we take out time to plan it according to your requests. This way, our team fully understands the scope of the required work and prioritizes the tasks according to your needs. We also realize the outcomes you expect from us. So we do our best to fulfill them without harming your development timeline and budget.

Quality gaps

Another challenge you may face while testing software products is the lack of expertise in particular aspects. For instance, it can be low proficiency in required test types or a misunderstanding of their purposes. 

If you want to ensure a 100% satisfying user experience, it’s essential to perform a wide range of manual and automated tests, both functional and non-functional. These may include functionality, unit, regression, performance, load, and other checkup types. They can significantly enhance your product and make it intuitive, slick, and bug-free.

Our team has sufficient expertise to cover multiple types of tests: from smoke and unit to user acceptance and penetration. We at UTOR also provide teams of manual and automation testers with relevant expertise. They cover the required testing with the most accurate outcomes. And since our company has worked with numerous software products, we understand the expected performance of each function or feature. Moreover, we know how to achieve those results.

As a professional QA team, we’re interested in your business processes. It helps us get to know your product better and understand what goals you’re pursuing. In return, we’ll ensure the following:

  • Define potential risks and prepare a risk mitigation strategy. 
  • Help optimize the development process and establish the critical quality goals for your engineering team. 
  • Reduce the number of bugs and delays in the development process.

Lack of documentation

Test documentation is a detailed description outlining the test coverage, execution process, basic terminology, etc. In a nutshell, it’s a cheat sheet every team member can use to find the necessary information about any testing process aspect.

Test documentation gives your team instant access to the critical points of the project. They can also see tests, use cases derived from them, bug reports, and other helpful insights. This approach provides a better understanding of the product and your team’s goals.

In turn, the lack of test documentation can considerably affect your QA team’s performance. Without it, teams risk making the following mistakes: 

  • Misunderstand how particular features should work. 
  • Prioritize testing of the wrong product functionality aspect of your product’s functionality.
  • Make more errors during checkups, skip significant defects, and deliver incorrect reports.

Testing without documentation can’t give you a full picture of what your team has to achieve. That’s why you should complete it and share it with your QA testing team and the Project Manager. Also, remember to inform them about any updates occurring along the way. Once everyone from the testing team is on board, you can finally begin the testing process.

All in all, well-groomed testing documentation will help everyone stay up-to-date. Your team won’t miss any important changes in the pipeline. They will also be aware of all the issues they need to solve and the outcomes you expect. 

The absence of metrics

Software testing metrics are quantitative values that help estimate the quality, progress, and efficiency of the testing process. Their primary goal is to provide valuable data improving the effectiveness and decision-making for further tests. The key software testing metrics include the process, product, and project ones.

Metrics show if you’ve met the testing goals and whether all the system components or processes have the required attribute (figure, percentage, etc.). Thus, you can compare the recommended values with the ones you’ve got after testing. Then, you can determine whether this difference is critical for a product. 

Without well-defined metrics, a testing team can’t define the scope of work and your product’s most problematic areas. Hence, you won’t see what’s wrong, which leads to the risk of launching a faulty app. Besides, poorly calculated metrics won’t make things any better for you. Instead, the testing team may misinterpret the testing results and “fix” the aspects that don’t need improvements.

If you need to determine which metrics to evaluate, we can help you out. First, our team defines the key testing processes we need to measure and the baseline to define each metric. Next, we allocate a specialist responsible for monitoring the changes in these metrics and agree on the tracking frequency. Once we’ve gathered the data, we calculate and interpret the defined metrics. As a result, we can identify the areas of improvement to work with.

Poor management

One of the most widespread challenges in testing software products is management. A QA team cannot manage itself, especially if it’s quite big (up to 50 people, for instance). Poor management leads to misunderstandings between teammates and task allocation. As a result, it slows down workflows. The team may start failing deadlines, leaving tasks unfinished, and eventually getting demotivated.

On top of that, you may even end up restarting your project from scratch — this time, with a brand-new team. It leads to additional costs and time for team onboarding and training and re-setting up the testing process. After all, it will likely result in a late product launch.

To avoid this outcome, you should hire dedicated Project and QA Managers. They will help you communicate, monitor, and adequately delegate tasks according to the workload and given production timeline.

Communication gaps

Today, many companies practice fully or partially remote work. It may be challenging to keep everyone up to speed — especially if it involves cooperating with employees located worldwide. In particular, this is the case when establishing a specific cooperation model (outsourcing, outstaffing, dedicated teams, or time-and-material). And, despite all the benefits those models can bring, communication gaps are pretty common. 

We at UTOR recommend choosing the most convenient communication channel everyone knows. It’s a good idea to separate different topics or project aspects into dedicated chats and invite only relevant people there. This way, you won’t get lost in tons of messages cooped up in one place. 

Moreover, we’ll regularly involve you in our team meetings. Thus, we can ensure we’re all on the same page and moving towards a common goal. Also, you get to know the team and receive fresh updates on the project’s progress.

To keep track of each team member’s performance, organize quick one-to-one meetings or monitor progress through project management tools like Jira. Finally, we always encourage constant feedback and knowledge sharing. Thanks to this approach, our team defines the key areas of improvement and has full access to relevant materials helping our employees grow.

Lack of test automation

With automated testing, you can reduce the costs of engaging extra manual resources. On top of that, it saves time and eliminates the human error risk. So if you can’t hire more employees, test automation is your go-to option.

To make it work, you can check with your current testing team or ask for help from an outside consultant to find the most suitable tool that meets your specific needs.

Failure to streamline the QA process and workflow 

One of the main challenges of software testing is the team’s inability to set up and manage the QA workflow correctly. It happens due to a poor understanding of software testing’s importance or the lack of practice.

However, you can use our tips on how to make it possible to streamline the QA process:

  • Ensure you hire a qualified, professional team of testers who know their responsibilities and can help you plan the workflow. You should also hire a QA Lead to define the key goals of QA product testing depending on your requirements. Such a specialist will work directly with you and provide reports. They determine the quality metrics and testing strategy, handle potential risks like specification failure or low productivity, and motivate the team.
  • Choose the most convenient type of engaging a QA team. You may hire them in-house or have a dedicated team provided by an outsourcing company. It’s highly beneficial if a partnering company offers multiple staffing models. Then, you can pick the one that perfectly fits your needs and budget.
  • QA consulting services are handy if you lack experience in the field. You’ll learn how to set up and smoothly manage the testing process, choose the most reliable and practical tools, and see if your product is ready for launch. You’ll also get a better idea of what your product needs. Finally, you will develop a detailed, accurate action plan for your testing team.
  • Make sure that the strategy you implement meets your business needs. All the points of your plan should support this goal. Turn to outside QA consultants and your testing team to adjust the plan.

Setting up the QA process may seem complex. However, it’s an essential part of your software development plan. So it’s worth dedicating sufficient resources and time to make it a beneficial investment into your future product. We at UTOR realize it and will gladly help you improve your product quality through a personalized software testing approach.

Summary

You should always consider software testing if you’re about to develop and launch a new product. It helps you detect bugs before the release and saves costs on extra maintenance. Moreover, testing can significantly increase user satisfaction and your target audience’s trust. Although you might face some testing challenges related to management, strategy, or calculating KPIs, it’s still a must if you want a competitive, high-quality product on the market.

If you don’t have much experience working with quality assurance for software products, our team at UTOR can give you a hand. We offer highly-skilled testing teams that can execute quality checkups, develop a fully-customized test plan, and point out the main areas of improvement. One of our main priorities is constant communication with clients: we always ensure we’re on the same page and keep you updated at every progress stage. 

If that’s what you’re looking for, feel free to contact us and schedule a consultation with our team representatives. We’ll get to know your product and help define the testing strategy based on your business needs.

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