Exploring Software Testing for Small and Medium EnterprisesUnder the guidance of the best practice theories of ISO, CMM, major software companies, and IT companies, I think Software testers in many small and medium Software Enterprises in China will be very confused, lack of testing resources, lack of reasonable testing procedures, and a lack of quality-oriented environment make testers of small and medium-sized software enterprises feel that testing is very difficult, the testing manager may not help but lament that "software testing is difficult to manage! ", I think the test management of small and medium-sized software enterprises must be tailored according to the characteristics of their own organizations. Do not blindly pursue the practices of large enterprises, but do not completely abandon those best practices. I have divided the development of Testing Management for small and medium-sized software enterprises into three stages. In each stage, test training, automated testing, testing procedures, test cases, and other aspects require different practices: (1) Primary Stage: "self-reliance ". Software testing at this stage is very difficult. We can only follow the project and closely cooperate with the Progress requirements. The quality will inevitably give way to the cost and progress. Because most small and medium-sized software enterprises are still in their infancy, the biggest difficulty is the cost of survival. Only products and projects can be maintained or developed as soon as possible. At this stage, the test management process is not very standard. The test version may be out of control due to the lack of reasonable configuration management procedures, and it is difficult to develop a test plan, basically, it is waiting for the developer to finish developing a function, immediately entering the test, and then repeatedly modifying and testing... At this stage, the test cases are not enough time to write, or the basic and rough test cases are written in the early stages, which will not be followed by these cases, because the program changes are too frequent and there is a lack of demand control, in addition, testers often cope with the test version submitted by developers, there is no time to complete or modify the test cases in the test case library. Therefore, some organizations even abandon the management of test cases and do not write test cases. In fact, writing test cases is good. Testers can at least familiarize themselves with the business needs of the system by writing test cases (although sometimes the requirement documents are also lacking !). The "exploratory testing" approach and the "agile testing" model may be more suitable for testers at this stage. At this stage, automated testing is basically impossible because there is a lack of sufficient resources. At this stage, testers can only make full use of the "self-reliance" spirit and cannot expect the company to provide you with a lot of training resources. They must learn and summarize in their work practices, when you are idle, you need to read books and learn from various types of online materials. (2) intermediate stage: "Hero age ". After a software company has gone through a difficult "survival period", it gradually realizes the importance of quality, the "cake" in the market, and has been divided into parts. Later, it hopes to compete for competitiveness through quality, get rid of "follow-up ". Of course, some small and medium-sized enterprises are forced to recognize the importance of quality. The customer does not recognize the product quality and the project is on the verge of failure. The boss realizes that quality control is not well done, therefore, we made up our mind to Improve the Quality. Therefore, we set up a testing team or department to recruit more testers. At this stage, one or two excellent testers are usually promoted as test leaders or test supervisors. These testers are "in danger" and vowed to put quality into practice. This stage is an era of "heroes". The boss hopes to be "heroes" and fails to realize that quality depends on all the staff, especially the quality consciousness of developers. Because the boss often assigned these "heroes" to junior testers and graduates. Therefore, "heroes" must undertake the arduous tasks of training, bringing people, and guiding tests. At this stage, we will follow the textbook practice to establish a test case library. However, testers are not aware of how to make full use of the test cases and do not fully understand the importance of the "design" of the test cases, stay on the surface of the test case writing. Heroes have played a role in establishing a strict test submission process and trying to perform daily build and smoke testing. The bug modification process is under standardized control, the boss will ask "Heroes" for their opinions before releasing the product or implementing the project. At this stage, automated testing will be attempted, but it will not be very effective and resources are still lacking, especially the lack of training related to automated testing. Apart from "heroes, other testers either "don't catch up" with automated testing or do not have sufficient scripting capabilities. In addition, in the absence of comprehensive project management and configuration management systems, "heroes" can only perform very simple automated attempts and stay on a small scope and individual attempts. (3) Advanced Stage: "Legal Society ". In the age of heroes, we advocate governance by people. It inevitably has many drawbacks, such as relying too much on senior testers, test leaders, or test supervisors and failing to form an "Echelon ", there is a lack of talent cultivation mechanisms. If you want to further improve software testing and quality management for small and medium-sized enterprises, You need to gradually transition to the "Legal Society", from relying on people to relying on systems. Of course, the idea of "governing people" in China is rooted in the so-called "man-made". It is not easy to change this idea. Moreover, in fact, we should not completely abandon "governance by people" (at any time, we all need "Heroes", "role models", and "models"), especially in the IT industry, everyone is used to the so-called "cannot kill Creative Thinking". Many people yearn for the working model of "wearing jeans to go to work, drinking cola to work, it is very difficult for these people to keep their rules and regulations in the same way as the blue-collar employees in the factory. At this stage, if we can better transition to the management mode of "governance by people" and "Legal System", the management of software testing will also be standardized accordingly, and training will become a routine task, the test case library will be fully established. testers will conduct tests based on the test cases, and the test summary report will be valued. Major project decisions will be determined based on the statistical analysis of the test results and defects. The automation test has gained a correct understanding. Dedicated automation test engineers are responsible for the development of automation test projects. Some test cases are automatically implemented, and most smoke tests are automated. Due to the standardization of project management and configuration management, the test process is also standardized, and the test can be carried out in a planned and orderly manner. The test time and test resources are basically guaranteed. Summary Software testers of small and medium-sized enterprises usually envy the software testing of large companies and large enterprises and look forward to enjoying the pleasure of software testing in a standardized testing environment like they do, we are looking forward to receiving more attention, but the current situation of enterprises often makes our own ideals unfeasible. I think "Blame others" is not a positive attitude. More people should recognize the status quo, change the status quo, and strive to create a better testing environment for themselves.
