Nothing is perfect. Even testing. But there are always a lot of ways to improve something. So these are some thoughts and approaches that I found useful on practice.
1. Design testing
Designer intentionally creates the best layout to help users to use perfect website and navigate it easily. So it’s really important to make sure that implemented page meets up the design. So there are some tools that could ease UI testing.
2. Create a board for the QA team
This will help to track all the tasks that should be done by QA engineers. Sometimes we don’t have time to implement automation test or update deprecated doc immediately, so the board will help us not to forget anything and when we will have time, we can choose what should be done in first place. Board could be created either in Jira(or any other bug tracking system) or in Trello.
3. Automation refactoring
Automation tests as any other code should be refactored when it’s needed. Refactoring reduces the complexity and redundancy in code, simplify logic or cut down on unnecessary loops. Create a task to refactor automation tests once in a while. Some things you should consider when refactoring:
simplify the tests, where it is possible;
find and analyses repeated redundant code blocks or sections, remove them, where possible;
make sure that after refactoring the tests work as intended;
You can also ask a developer to review your code if it is possible. Code refactoring is an important step in tests maintenance. Always add refactoring to your project estimation and spend time on some of the best practices.
4. Visual regression testing
Visual regression allows you to make visual comparisons between the baseline versions of the site and the version in development. The complete process is nothing but taking the screenshot of the original design and comparing it with the new, looking for pixel differences. There a lot of tools that can help you implement screenshot automated tests, here is one of them.
5. Update documentation
Test documentation helps to keep all testing related information in one place so it is important to keep it up-to-date. Plan to implement the revision of testing documentation once in a while. Don’t forget to use the standard template for documentation.
6. Pairwise smoke testing
Try to use different approaches for smoke testing to cover up all the cases, such as pairwise (a.k.a. all-pairs) testing.
ISTQB defines All-Pairs Testing (or Pairwise Testing) as A black-box test design technique in which test cases are designed to execute all possible discrete combinations of each pair of input parameters.
It can help you to find some bugs, you couldn’t have found earlier. Here is one of the free online tools to generate all combinations. Also, try to use other testing techniques and find that suits you.
7. Write down everything and don’t hesitate to ask questions
The memory could be tricky and when someone asks you a question about the task you’ve tested several months ago, it could be hard to remember the details. So it is always a good thing to write down everything new or important: in test documentation, in the task comments, etc.
If you feel that some requirement hasn’t been detailed enough, don’t hesitate to ask questions. The lack of clarity in the requirements can lead to big problems in the future. For good testing practice, the most important task is to ask the right questions, at the right time and to the right audience.
8. Broken links checking
Broken links can have a negative impact on the website’s usability and ranking. Because of this, it’s best practice to either remove or update broken links. Cleaning up broken links can add context to the website, improve user experience, and make content within your website easier for visitors and search engines to discover. On the other hand, websites with too many broken links can be a signal of low quality to search engines. There are some tools that could scan the whole site and provide a broken links report:
Web monitoring is a mixture of web application monitoring techniques to ensure that your application is online, loading quickly, and working correctly. It is possible for the web application to be online and loading quickly, but returning an error every time. So it is crucial to set up different monitoring tools.
10. Always learn something new
Software testing is demanding because you have to keep yourself updated with the latest knowledge as well continuously work to make a product better. Make time for yourself to learn something new once a day/week/month. It can be small amounts of knowledge, but it will pay off in a long term.
