How can you develop your understanding of enterprise software as a QA professional?

Based on my experience working for product based companies, Understanding the business domain is crucial for effective enterprise software testing. For instance, testing an ERP system requires knowledge of core accounting, inventory, sales, and purchasing processes. This can be achieved through studying business requirements documents, user manuals, consulting with domain experts, or taking online courses. This knowledge equips you to identify key functionalities, workflows, and data models, enabling you to design comprehensive and relevant test scenarios.

I would start with what Enterprise Software is. It is a type of software that helps large businesses and organizations manage their different processes. The types: CRM - Customer Relationship Management (Salesforce) CMS - Content Management System (WordPress, Shopify) ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning (Oracle NetSuite) Business Intelligence (BI), Project Management (PM), Human Resource Management (HRM) etc. Moving on to what software covers based on the main solutions it provides and business needs.

Engage with Domain Experts: Schedule time with domain experts within the organization, such as business analysts, product managers, and even end-users. These discussions can provide invaluable insights into real-world application, challenges, and expectations from the software.

Knowing the business domain is essential and probably the biggest challenge that most QA professional will face, since the enterprise software is in a field or domain for which they might not have much of any knowledge or experience. It takes some time and concentrated effort to aquire such knowledge. So they should seek out and leverage their knowledge resources from the start. And then with the actual testing make sure they first define the input, processing, and output requirements of the given task. Properly doing so up front will save them alot of wasted time in the end.

One thing I have found helpful is understanding the complex enterprise software from a bird's eye view to gain critical knowledge about various flows in the system. This helps in quickly getting to the moving components so that when a change occurs, as a QA, we can understand the necessary testing workflows. A good QA comes into the development cycle to understand the stories, but a great QA starts the journey at the requirements and begins to plan.

I always encourage my team to be involved as much as possible in the architecture discussion. Get involved in the very early stage of the discussion which helps to gather and understand the logic and analysis behind choosing each technical or architectural decision. Ask relevant questions, spend effort to deep dive, understand the dependencies - which will not only broaden your depth in architecture but also help to create an impactful test strategy.

Though I’m not a QA professional by designation I feel this is paramount for any QA professional. Software architecture should be the Bible for all the stakeholders in the system. With devops team concept replacing traditional teams you can’t expect a QA role in a team to have understanding only on the surface of the application.

On day one the QA professional should ask for a copy of the Technical Requirements Guide (or equivalent) and review that closely. It should define what specific architectures are expected to be supported for the Enterprise Software. And as they are doing their testing, document the specific versions of whatever they are running for their testing (e.g. java app server, database server, browser). That information needs to be documented and made available for future reference.

In enterprise software development, testing integration points is crucial for functionality and performance. Employ mock services to simulate external systems for isolated testing. Conduct end-to-end testing to ensure all components work harmoniously. Assess the impact of integration on system performance through load and stress testing. Evaluate the security of integration points, ensuring data encryption and proper authentication. Keep track of version changes in external systems to maintain compatibility. Implement robust monitoring and logging mechanisms to track integration points' performance in production. By incorporating these strategies, you enhance the reliability, security, and performance of your software's integration points.

Get to know the people who run the source systems and understand the nuances of the data from their point of view. You will better understand the likely usage parameters of the enterprise system and the customer usage scenarios so that you can be more aware of unusual and "corner case" usage scenarios. These folks will also be able to help you get or create better test data.

Read the user stories and use cases. Understand the personas and desired outcomes of the test case. Be careful to watch for false positives because you could actually say something passed the test when it really failed.

To enhance your grasp of enterprise software from a QA perspective, focusing on understanding user roles and permissions is important. Do this in order to achieve this: 1. Review User Stories, Personas, and Scenarios 2. Engage with Product Teams 3. Conduct Role-Based Testing 4. Verify Authentication and Authorization Mechanisms 5. Audit Trails and Accountability 6. Use Automated Testing Tools 7. Stay Updated on Best Practices

Some great go ahead points for QA, Nice structured guidelines. Need to know about how to maintain friendly and competitive relationship with developer while working as QA.

The QA Test lead needs to be well trained on the usage and functional capabilities of the Solution. It's important that they are able to create usability issues. Brad

En mi experiencia ha sido muy importante utilizar datos realistas y revisiones de integración entre microservicios. También manejar automation para minimizar el tiempo de pruebas.

No solo se trata de generar evidencia, insumos y datos reales se debe de conocer el tipo de producto a evaluar, para poder manejar un check list más apegado a la realidad y a las necesidades del usuario final, las automatizaciones son necesarias si las pruebas que se realizan son recurrentes, porqué en algunas circunstancias no solo se evalúa lo automatizado, sino que se evalúa la integridad de los datos, flujos en el frontend o backend. El ingeniero de QA debe de ser autodidacta por los diferentes tipos de lenguajes en los que se programan y estar consientes en los avances de las IA para la mejora continúa.

The Modern QA Professional needs to take a 360 degree view of QA testing - Customer view: Stress Testing Platform with Real Client Data. Historical view: With an ever changing code base, smart regression testing is a must to maintain code quality. Functional View: Are the new product features working as advertised. Performance View: Does the software product continue to get faster and operating efficiently with newer versions getting better thru benchmarks.

It's all about stakeholder and resource limitation definitions. Everything has use cases and time / money / effort restrictions- just be honest and communicate these parameters up front- question all assumptions!