What is test documentation and what is the importance of it?
Testing documentation is key to good work. It helps QA engineers organize and standardize testing processes and define the scope of tests. Documentation allows the team to estimate the testing effort needed, test coverage, and resource tracking. This is an excellent way to keep things organized and on schedule. Also, test documentation can communicate to stakeholders what changes were made and ensure that they were made correctly.
Why is documentation so important?
Test documentation is necessary to understand the full scope of a project. Without goals, an action plan, and all the possible conditions considered, specific results are unclear. In this case, everyone may have a different understanding of how the common goal should be achieved and what the final product should be.
Quality assurance documentation is imperative for businesses. It increases management efficiency and reduces the risk of many issues.
What test documentation do software testers use?
Test documentation is divided into two main types: internal and external. However, which set of documentation you need to use in a specific project depends on the goals, duration, team, and methodology of work on this project. Let's take a closer look at the most commonly used types of test documentation.
Internal test documentation.
Test plans
A test plan is a single document that contains all of the information a tester or QA team needs to do during a project. Such a document is distributed between team members and shared with stakeholders.
In order to ensure the best possible testing, a test plan should be created for every product. The plan should specify the object of testing, schedule, how testing will start and end, what the testing strategy is, what resources are needed, what risks exist, what limitations there are, and what environment the testing will take place in.
Test strategy
A test strategy is a high-level document written by a leading and experienced test engineer that defines the approach to testing. The testing strategy is derived from the business requirements document, it basically sets the standards for testing. The test strategy contains the following: business problems, objectives, and scope, testing approaches, documentation formats, team reporting structure, customer engagement strategy, automation needs, etc.
Use cases
A use case document is a less formal and simpler version of a user flow. It is based on the assumption of what your user will do and how they will interact with the program. Each use case is focused on the goal and how the software is supposed to behave in that instance. This allows testers to see and evaluate the intended paths and behaviors of the user. When building a use case, testers take into account the requirements and how the solution will help the business reach its goals.
Test cases
Test cases, which cover step-by-step guidance, detailed conditions, and current inputs of a testing task, are the backbone of any software testing effort. They're used to cover functional, UI, and other types of testing. Test cases allow teams to compare available resources to current conditions and desired outcomes. Using this, they can determine if the product is ready to be released. When testing new products, companies can use different formats for test case tasks. However, the details in the tasks should always be pretty specific to ensure that they're clear and easy to understand.
Checklist
A checklist is a document of tests that can be used to either supplement or replace test cases. Checklists are easier to create, but require the tester to go through the items on the list one by one. Test cases, on the other hand, give more detail on how to conduct the test. However, they are more time-consuming to create.
Traceability Matrix
A traceability matrix is a form of documentation that has test cases mapped with their requirements. It has custom IDs for team members and stakeholders to track the progress of any tasks.
External test documentation
Bug reports
A bug report provides complete information about the bug (description of it, showing the actual and expected results, how serious the issue is, the priority level, the environment in which it happened, and any attachments like screenshots or videos, logs) and documents how to reproduce it (the steps required and the conditions under which this might occur).
A well-worded, effective bug report can increase the chances of quick bug fixes and reduce the time it takes for everyone involved to understand the problem.
Requirements specification
The requirements document will help you avoid misunderstandings and disagreements during the development process. It will also help testers document their testing efforts, like test plans, test cases, and checklists.
External test reports
The external test report gathers information about the testing process and presents it to stakeholders. The report contains final test findings and results, which are detailed in this document.
Test documentation is dynamic. If the QA team doesn't update it regularly, it's pointless. Requirements and priorities may change during testing, which will affect test coverage, resources required, and other factors. Failure to document changes can lead to ineffective documents and inconsistencies. Over time, the cases in your test cases become obsolete and lose relevance. New functionalities may be added, which also need to be covered with tests. If you don't keep careful documentation, you risk producing useless documentation.
Whether to create test documentation is entirely up to each customer. We recommend to our clients that they do this, but ultimately, the final decision is their own. The benefits of documenting your workflow are quite easy to see — it can help you identify and solve problems while reducing errors and improving efficiency. With these test documents, it will be easy for newcomers to the team to figure out what's what. The creation of documentation takes additional time, but in the end, it will save time.
