Tuesday, November 25, 2008

BIG Deployment to LIVE!

Finally, the current Change Request is deployed to LIVE! What a relieve.
Well, we have done the testing by phases and in different servers, i.e UAT, Training and Live servers. The type and quantity of testings is huge and repetitive just to ensure everything is working fine and as specified, without affecting the existing system behaviour.

The things I've learned from this Change Request:
1. Testing by phases and at different servers is highly helpful for both QA and Developers.
Reason: Practise makes perfect

2. Need better Clarification and Understanding about the Change Request within the current system.
Reason: Lots of hiccups are due to the lack of understanding in
=> the existing system behaviour
=> the Specifications & Requirements in the Change Request
=> the system design

3. As for the QA, apart from what stated in #2, we also need to prepare the Test Design. The Test Design can only be 100% achieve if have better understanding of the above #2 criterias.

4. Finally, I strongly disagree with the use of Test Cases when performing the testing. Test Cases is very time consuming and ineffective. I prefer to have a good Test Design, then from there prepare the Test List in simple way using simple method like table, matrix and forms.
Reason: Faster, Simple, Easy & Usable - Everything in one place (Specs, Criterias & Test Results)

All in all, testing is about one's passion. It's not everyday job for everybody. As it is a highly repetitive job, ones must have patient as well as highly imaginative in testing the same features but from different angles.