Why QA is So Time Consuming?
The answer is yes QA is Time consuming. The truth lies behind the time consumption is there are lots of activities to do. It’s not just testing an application. But for every test executed, it should be documented that how the test has been performed and what were the desired and actual outcomes of the test
In QA writing Test cases is the biggest time consumer, because:
- Test cases must cover each and every use case. All possible branches/scenarios have to be tested. So, more requirements lead to more number of test cases.
- The writing effort multiplies as more functionality is developed. Increasing functionalities broadens the tester’s perspective. eventually, teams keep expanding the breadth of test cases.
Know your Time Consumers
At first, know the gluttons of your time. Something that eats up more of your time. Here over/hyper documented test cases and non-reusable test cases are your chief time consumers.
- Over/ Hyper documentation of test cases takes a long time to write. It also makes the test cases dilute and boring. Secondly, it’s harder impossible to keep an over documented test case updated.
- And then the killer Non-reusable test cases which eat up your efforts only for itself. This makes your writing cycle longer.
How to Minimize time writing for Test Cases?
Basically, Effective Test cases should cover the details which are absolutely necessary. the test case shouldn’t contain more detailed descriptions than the minimum required to perform their tests. It varies by case to case and sometimes, there could be a need to make your test case more detailed and document step-by-step. The point is based on the circumstance you have to switch between one-lines and detailed test cases.
Exploratory Test cases: Give a shot for single line exploratory cases when requirements are limited and time is crucial. Exploratory Test cases are the test cases of a single line. It describes what needs to be performed in the test in a line. Some advantages of one-lines are it needs low maintenance and easily reusable.
Detailed test cases: There are situations when you have to write step-by-step test cases when you test complex applications, with complex combinations and flows. where one-liners won’t work.
Choosing the right one is important. Picking up writing detailed test cases when a one-liner can do the job is a mistake and it costs time.
#Tips to minimize time writing for Test Cases
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- Keep it simple: Writing a test case hyper-detailed and not readily understandable by others is of no use. So Write test cases in simple language using the default template.
- Make it reusable: While writing test cases, remember that the test cases will be reused. The test case or test step could be reused somewhere else in another scenario. So craft your test case well to make it reusable.
- Stay organized, Use a Test Case Management Tool: Managing test cases using spreadsheets becomes extremely difficult and inefficient to maintain as the team and number of test cases grow. Use a Test Case Management Tool to better organize and manage all the test cases in one place. This not only helps to write effective test cases but also helped me in tracking the progress about them.
- Have Atomic Test Steps Each test step should be standalone and atomic. Don’t make steps complex with compound sentences and sub-steps. Make it clear-headed more simple a test step is, the easier to understand and test.
How QA Touch Helps In Minimizing Your Efforts in Writing Test Cases
- Mindmap: Analyze and Structure scenarios well with our mindmap before start writing the test cases. It will save the QA’s precious time.
- Smart Compose: While writing Test Case the QA team spends more time transcribing. And, this AI feature helps the QA team compose their test cases swift by predicting the sequence of characters. You can approve prediction and continue composition on the fly by just a keypress.
- Copy/Clone Test cases: Reuse your test case suite with ease by handy features provided by QA Touch. Analyze, write and reuse test cases by Copy/Clone feature.
- Reiterate Steps: Use Reiterate steps in QA Touch to save your reusable steps as a library and add it to test cases at one click.
Hope these tips helps and explain more about writing time-effective test cases. Apart from this, you can leverage a test management tool to make you smarter and get things done sooner, in a systematic way.
Drop us a line, and we’d be happy to keep improving QA touch with your suggestions and feedback
