Quality assurance (for software) is the process followed to provide some level of confidence that software-based system conforms to established technical requirements.

learn more… | top users | synonyms

31
votes
9answers
2k views

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 ...
19
votes
9answers
2k views

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 ...
17
votes
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
votes
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 ...
13
votes
5answers
1k views

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? ...
12
votes
6answers
1k views

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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
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 ...
8
votes
5answers
1k views

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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
6answers
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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
5answers
1k views

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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
4answers
1k views

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
votes
9answers
1k views

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
votes
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
votes
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
votes
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 ...

1 2
15 30 50 per page