How can you ensure timely, relevant, and actionable feedback in software testing?

- employ a good ratio of automated effort to your ongoing regression testing - make sure you automated test output is widely accessibly, real-time and traceable to requirements. - this in turn allows you to manually 'explore' new features and raise issues quickly. Test like a human. Talk to your developers about your findings as soon as you can. - stay on top of requirements from the business but also wander off the path a little. Apply some common sense where you know something isn't right as a user, but the business may not have considered it when drafting their acceptance criteria. - also embrace non-functional testing with OS, browser and device variation - think performance, explore accessibility, add Lighthouse auditing etc.

Before defining a clear objective, you need to have clear requirements of what you're going to test. The clarity of the requirements is the clarity of the objective.

Ensuring timely, relevant, and actionable feedback in software testing is crucial for maintaining the quality and efficiency of the development process. Here are several strategies to achieve this: 1- Clear Objectives and Criteria 2- Frequent Communication 3- Automation 4- Use of Tools 5- Immediate Reporting 6- Prioritize Feedback 7- Contextual Feedback 8- Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) 9- Feedback Analysis 10- Encourage a Feedback Culture By implementing these strategies, software development teams can significantly improve the quality and efficiency of their testing processes, ensuring that feedback is timely, relevant, and actionable.

clear objectives and criteria - Certainly this is the first and foremost step for any quality assurance.. you can't choose the path unless you are clear about the destination.. cost of failing this assessment is certainly a huge loss in terms of money, energy and time. Completely agree with this. But be mindful it may be a responsibility of QA. But it is not feasible without the cooperation of key stakeholders!!

Define a Test plan Communicate the Test plan Track the plan and keep alive Engage early in the development process and ask all questions. Review design,code. Be transparent with the team Track progress and publish the results. Raise a flag for potential risks then and there.

When looking at automation tools, especially for integration and end-to-end tests, with a good toolbag and a bit of creativity, the options are almost endless. For example, with screen diffing and UI automation tools, even legacy software that is outside your codebase can be tested. Need to test that a backend workflow triggers a mobile push notification? You can use screen diffing and an emulator setup. Depending on what you are trying to achieve, consider Postman collections, web crawlers, audio diffing, fuzzy logic, and even ChatGPT. The downside, of course, is that complex setups require maintenance and tend toward flakiness

Choose appropriate methods and tools according to what your objective/goal is. For example, if you are looking to test the performance of a web application from a user perspective, then test from the front end GUI and not using API calls.

Depending on your objectives and criteria, you may need to use different methods and tools to collect and analyze feedback. For example, you may use manual or automated testing, exploratory or scripted testing, unit or integration testing, or a combination of these. You may also use different tools to facilitate your feedback process, such as test management software, bug tracking systems, feedback forms, surveys, analytics, or dashboards. You should choose the methods and tools that best suit your context, budget, and resources, and that can provide you with reliable, accurate, and consistent feedback.

In Agile, having automated and well-maintained test cases is crucial for ensuring quality throughout an entire SDLC. As we often make product changes, test cases should also be updated promptly to reflect those changes. This has to be part of a standardized process. Unfortunately, stakeholders often neglect this and cut corners with Quality Assurance, which inevitably causes problems in later stages. Compromises should not be made with quality as we have just one chance, only thirty seconds, to retain users' attention. If they find the product flawed, they will hardly give it another chance.

Some effective methods & tools to ensure you provide timely, relevant & actionable feedback: Shift Left Test:Testing early in the development cycle to identify problems early Iterative Test:Test in short cycles to provide quick feedback & enable correction Test Automation:Automate repetitive tasks so testers can focus on complex problems e.g Cypress,Selenium, Katalon Studio etc Exploratory Test:Testers explore the application to discover issues & provide insights Session-based Test:Test specific functions in focused sessions Bug Tracking System:Track, manage & assign bugs for resolution (Jira,Bugzillla etc) Test Management tools:Plan, organize, track, & report test activities (TestRail, Zephyr, QMetry, Testsigma, QAtouch etc) #testingtools

Feedback loops in software testing are the vital arteries ensuring a robust development lifecycle. They serve as iterative processes, embedding continuous improvement by integrating feedback at various stages - pre-testing, in the midst of testing, and post-testing. My perspective underscores the importance of tailoring these loops to engage diverse stakeholders - developers, testers, managers, customers, and end-users - enabling a comprehensive spectrum of perspectives. This inclusivity enhances the quality of feedback, ensuring its timeliness, relevance, and actionability.

Feedback plays a vital role in Testing. We must take the feedback and work on them to improve in the quality of product. Feedback at every stage results in fulfillment of requirements as well as developing the right product

While testing a feature, always keep the end customer in mind and report feedback in the form of feature requests. Understanding your customers is crucial. Collect feedback from developers, testers, company employees, and a specific percentage of customers. Enhance the product based on this feedback and proceed to the next release cycle, incrementally increasing the customer base, gathering their feedback, and iteratively refining the product. This approach helps to mitigate the risk of market failure and ensures continuous product improvement, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction.

- Clearly understand the objectives of the testing. Avoid repetition or irrelevance. Test plan should contain only the relevant information. Include all details, e.g. versions of the programs. The quality of your test plan will represent the quality of the testing your team will perform. - Once test plan is ready start with the reviews. Peer and cross functional team feedback plays vital role in planning phase. - Use adequate amount of automation and re-use existing scripts (regression /smoke) which reduce Manual efforts. This will help in effective and quality testing.

There is no harm in giving feedback whether it is deviation in tests or any other observations. Who knows these observations/ feedbacks may give scope in adding new requirements or enhancing the requirements. So testers should notify everything as a feedback, never hesitate to share is observed. And these observations/feedbacks can be shared within the team to all the stakeholders, so that all knows about that and everyone are on the same page... While sharing these feedback it should be clear and precise otherwise it may not convey what you are sharing to the stakeholders.

Test results can be included in the feedback about testing, as well as analyze the causes of the main problems and breakdowns. It is also worth adding your own ideas about improving testing at this stage/project. Feedback can be made in the form of a wiki page on a bug tracking system or made in the form of a PDF (or any appropriate format) text file and shared with all interested parties by email or via private messages.

Documenting notes properly and successfully greatly affects the quality of the software and its suitability for work and use, thus reducing maintenance costs and future development of the program.

Continuous improvement is the reason for feedback loops. If the new information learned from the testing is not being fed into the product being developed and the stakeholders are not acting on it the you have a one way communication and not a “loop”. Always ensure the information being provided is timely, concise and clear, and in context. Of course without a process in place then this task is difficult. Engage your stakeholders, ask them what information they’d like to see about the product and how often and then do that! Happy Testing!

A lesson to be ingrained is to ask feedback before any formalization of testing (asking others devs, stakeholders, etc. if their expectations matches yours) and after, to make sure the results cover all the expected scenarios (otherwise, the testing could be successful by the sheer luck that nobody looked too deeply into issues - this time...)

Regularly collect customer feedback, analyze patterns, identify pain points, and prioritize improvements. Implement changes based on actionable insights to enhance the product's user experience and overall satisfaction.

Always have Quality Assurance Metrics in place. Test case coverage, Test automation coverage, and Defect density can help your case and help your stakeholders make proper changes.