Software Tester and Documentation

  

As Software Testers, while doing our day-to-day job we need a lot of information. Maintaining or documenting this information in an organized way becomes a very crucial task.

Documentation may include (but is not limited to) as below -

🎯 Test Cases

🎯 Test Plans

🎯 Bug Reports

🎯 Test Data

🎯 Testing Checklist (Product &/or Project specific)

🎯 Regression Test Suites

🎯 Automated Checks

🎯 Test Environment Details

🎯 Database Details (Connection info, Credentials, Tables, etc.)

🎯 Product knowledge

🎯 Setup/Configuration Details

🎯 Tools (that aid Testing activities) Details

🎯 Any other information that can aid in Testing

In my opinion, we should always put consistent and conscious efforts to capture the information that can help us in the future.

🎯 As an example, let's say you are exploring a specific workflow within your application. During this exploration you struggle with the required data creation, you receive some error and/or warning messages in between, and you miss out on some pre-requisite setups or configurations. To move ahead in completing the workflow, you reached out to team members (Testers/Developers/Product) and got all your issues resolved.

🎯 In such cases; I reckon it's very important to capture all the information that has helped you along the way. This does not just help you in the future, but also it may help you to assist someone as and when needed.

🎯 With the interest of time, on every occasion, it may not be feasible to prepare a well-polished document or notes and this is fine. However; one should attempt to capture the information in whichever form and tool it's feasible then.

Food for thought -
When it comes to documentation, this is my own favorite quote "Information Dimag (दिमाग) में रखो या न रखो... Document में जरुर रखना... जरुरत पडने पर Dimag (दिमाग) नहीं काम आया तो Document जरुर काम आयेगा...", meaning "Keep the information in your brain or not... Must keep it in the document... If the need arises, if your brain does not help, then the document will come in handy..."

If you have any questions and want to connect with me? Feel free to book a 1:1 meeting.

Keep Learning, Keep Growing 👍