Quality assurance (for software) is the process followed to provide some level of confidence that software-based system conforms to established technical requirements.
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Are programmers bad testers?
I know this sounds a lot like other questions which have already being asked, but it is actually slightly different. It seems to be generally considered that programmers are not good at performing the ...
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9answers
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Should we quit trying to do agile if QA takes 12 weeks?
Someone in my company recently proposed changes to our core product that our managers feel should trigger what I guess my company considers a full QA cycle (i.e. testing the entire product suite from ...
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6answers
459 views
The cost of longer delay between development and QA
At my current position, QA has become a bottleneck. We have had the unfortunate occurence of features being held out of the current build so that QA could finish testing. This means features that ...
15
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3answers
560 views
Add a unit test for each new bug
In my job all developers that resolve a bug have to add a new unit test that warns about this type of bugs (in the case it occours again). If a unit test is not possible (for example, a webpage design ...
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How are minimum system requirements determined?
We've all seen countless examples of software that ships with "minimum system requirements" like the following:
Windows XP/Vista/7
1GB RAM
200 MB Storage
How are these generally determined? ...
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6answers
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How does a large company make rookie mistakes which leave security holes? [closed]
Sony was recently hacked with a SQL injection and the passwords of their user's was stored in plain text. These are rookie mistakes. In such a large company, how does this pass QA? How do they not ...
12
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4answers
374 views
Dilemma of QA vs. iterations
In my company, we successfully working with agile practices - but without using iterations. The main reason is that we can't find a clean way to fit in QA in an iteration cycle.
We understand QA as ...
9
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12answers
882 views
Should QA find reproducible scenarios?
Sometimes my QA team reports bugs, but neither I or them have any idea on how to reproduce them. This leads to very long and frustrating debugging sessions which sometimes do not even yield results.
...
8
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4answers
2k views
What are good requirements for a QA engineer?
We're hiring a QA person and I am supposed to come up with some interview questions. The truth is, I don't know much about what a good QA engineer should know, much less what good interview questions ...
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Test-driven development and improving white box testing skills
I am an entry level Java Programmer straight out of school.
I have good knowledge and experience with J2SE.
Can anyone advise me on how to improve or tune my skills towards being a Java white box ...
8
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6answers
446 views
When should development stop and QA begin?
We write a complete functional specification for our development team of two. We do not have professional testers however we have drafted in the help of our available helpdesk personnel to perform 'QA ...
7
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5answers
724 views
What is the role of QA in a BDD-driven project?
If running a project using BDD with 100% coverage of user stories with automated acceptance tests, what would be the role of a tester / quality assurance person?
I guess I am imagining that ...
7
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555 views
How to handle growing QA reporting requirements?
Some Background:
Our company is growing very quickly - in 3 years we've tripled in size and there are no signs of stopping any time soon. Our marketing department has expanded and our IT requirements ...
7
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5answers
653 views
Outsourcing Quality Assurance and Testing [closed]
I was recently approached by a software firm that specializes in Quality Assurance and Testing.
Up until this point, the developers at our (small) company have been responsible for their own QA for ...
7
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2answers
457 views
What programming skills does someone in QA need to work effectively in extreme programming projects?
Well, the title really says it all, but to elaborate a bit, can you take a random, typically effective QA department and have them learn to work in an XP environment (with a learning curve to pick up ...
6
votes
6answers
314 views
When conducting a code review, should the focus be on the completeness of the requirement?
Given that the reviewer is not part of the project, but was assigned to review because he has done some coding for the application being updated/enhanced.
Is it the reviewer's job to ensure that the ...
6
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6answers
3k views
Is it reasonable for QA department to get higher average salary than that of development department? [closed]
I just talked to a friend. He said that in his company, QA persons get higher salary than developers, that on average it is 2 times higher.
I'm quite surprised because I have thought that QA persons ...
6
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5answers
221 views
If a new feature is implemented and there is a bug, should QA reject that feature or accept it and file a new bug?
At work, we use a bug tracker called Pivotal Tracker (www.pivotaltracker.com) that allows engineers to file features and bugs. If a feature or bug fix is delivered, it is QA's job to accept or reject ...
6
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3answers
216 views
Long-Term Strategy For Implementing a QA System?
I have been given the task of implementing some QA testing into a massive existing system. We're going to start out with system-level tests and might add unit tests if it is deemed necessary.
I ...
6
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2answers
249 views
How much detail is in a good UI regression test?
We use a detailed step-by-step user-interface regression test for our commercial web application. It has a "backbone" test for the most used / most important parts of the system, with optional tests ...
5
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6answers
423 views
Does a “QA Programmer” style job exist?
Basically a programmer that comes in during the testing phase of a project and once a tester finds a bug, tracks down the cause. I enjoy this investigative process and am generally able to track down ...
5
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4answers
579 views
Mock Objects for Testing - Test Automation Engineer Perspective
How often QA engineers are responsible for developing Mock Objects for Unit Testing. So dealing with Mock Objects is just developer job ?. The reason i ask is i'm interested in QA as my career and am ...
5
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5answers
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Are there coding tests to recruit a QA engineer?
I'm a software engineer in a small company and we are currently recruiting our first QA engineer. The guy will have to write as many as possible automated tests on our web-based tools suite.
As I've ...
5
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6answers
778 views
Should QA be part of the development department?
I work for a small company that has had a product development department for quite a while. What we haven't had, however, is a QA/testing group.
We are looking to add a testing group, but are ...
5
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3answers
468 views
What is your strategy for converting RC builds into retail?
We're trying to implement a strategy for how we transition our builds from RC to released retail code.
When we label a build as a release candidate, we send it to QA for regression. If they approve ...
5
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4answers
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Software testing automation documentation
What document types could be used when describing software testing automation (on any phase, automation planning, test design, implementation, reporting)? Is there any standard types of documents?
If ...
4
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9answers
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Separate trackers for features and defects?
At my company we use JIRA for new feature requests and then the QA department logs any bugs/defects in Quality Center. I find Quality Center to be very non-userfriendly as it requires IE because it ...
4
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3answers
177 views
What are creative ways to unblock a development team?
The setting: Multiple development teams, lots of dependencies and constraints.
If one team is blocked on developing some code, getting service calls, or moving to a QA environment, what are ways for ...
4
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5answers
221 views
What is a good measure of testing/tester efficiency?
I am about to participate in a discussion with management regarding measuring our testing efficiency as a QA organization. The main reason behind this is that half of our team is contracted out and ...
4
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3answers
171 views
Quality Assurance=inspections, reviews..?
Studying this subject extensively, the most books state the following:
Quality Assurance: prevention activity. Act of inspection, reviewing..
Quality Control: testing
While there are some ...