Best Practices for QA/Testing Plan?
John Kennelly
9 replies
Does anyone out there have a good QA/Testing plan framework they use to test a web app/SaaS product? I am a first time founder looking to help my engineer cofounder develop a QA process and was hoping to find a good starting point to build our QA plan. Thanks in advance for any help pointing us in the right direction!
Replies
Gaurav Parvadiya@gauravparvadiya
Twinr - App Builder
I think first step here is to start with manual QA process. After that slowly you can move towards automation.
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Magistrate
@graham_patel agreed, not looking to automate yet. Was looking for a framework/test plan document that we could use to track the manual testing
@graham_patel @magistratejohn Manual testing should def be the place to start. Would encourage you to create a spreadsheet or checklist of happy paths and common user flows as well as dedicate time to exploratory / chaos testing!
Optimized Toolbox
Who is going to test your product? Your co-founder or some dedicated QA person?
Magistrate
@pm_optimizer great question and thanks for replying! For now, it will be just my cofounder and I testing, eventually we will have a dedicated QA person
Optimized Toolbox
@magistratejohn It depends how thorough do you want to be with it. I think there should be some basic tests written by your co-founder.
At the same time, ideally, he prepares every feature on staging environment, tests it, and then deploys it to production. You can also check it on staging to be sure it works and matches the design. I would never deploy to production on Friday and we would be deploying throughout the week, ideally Mondays. We had 2 week sprints starting on Tuesdays so we tried to get everything to Staging by Wednesday/Thursday the second week, report bugs, and test it immediately. We wanted to be sure that we have a green light by Monday lunch and deploy it to Production after.
One of the things is that there's no one going to do code reviews for him, which is unfortunate. This should be happening every time he deploys his "final" version to Staging and there should be tested through interaction.
I think this should be enough for now when you're just starting.
@pm_optimizer @magistratejohn Unsure abt the details of your responsibilities and technical backgrounds, but I'd try to keep as much testing eng owned as possible. This leads to better quality and quicker iterations -- as reported by the DORA team (https://dora.dev/capabilities/te...)!
We're also launching Momentic on PH in Dec! Our platform is designed to help teams scale and automate their eng-owned testing, without testing eating up so much dev time.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
https://momentic.ai
https://www.producthunt.com/prod...
Magistrate
@pm_optimizer this is great, thanks so much for the advice!
Hey John,
Congrats on diving into the founder life! QA can be a game-changer for your web app. I've been down that road, and here's a spartan breakdown for your QA/Testing plan.
1. Define Objectives: Start by outlining what you want to achieve with your testing – performance, functionality, security, etc. This clarity is your north star.
2. Test Cases: Build detailed test cases covering all features. Break them down into positive and negative scenarios. This groundwork pays off.
3. Automation is Key: Invest in automated testing tools. They're your sidekick, catching bugs faster than a manual sweep.
4. Regression Testing: After each update, rerun your old test cases. You'd be surprised how often new features break existing ones.
5. User Feedback Loops: Beta testers are your goldmine. Real users find real issues. Embrace feedback loops to improve continuously.
6. Documentation: Keep a record of your test cases, results, and any tweaks made. It's your QA Bible.
By the way, I recently read an interesting article titled "Managed Quality Assurance: Unlocking Business Value in 2024" and perhaps you could highlight something important to you in it? In my journey, this framework has proven to be solid.