Stakeholders are pushing for speed over thorough QA testing. How can you ensure quality doesn't suffer?

To ensure quality while accommodating speed, prioritize key areas with risk-based testing, focusing on critical functionalities and areas prone to issues. Implement automated testing for repetitive tasks to save time. Use continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) to catch defects early. Maintain clear communication with stakeholders about risks and set realistic expectations. Incorporate agile practices to enable iterative testing and quick feedback loops, ensuring quality remains intact amidst rapid development.

The DMAIC methodology ensures the integrity of the process. During the analysis phase, the process is carefully examined for areas of improvement using statistics to validate any claims about the process. FMEA helps to prevent problems before they occur by utilizing reliable data. Integrating error-proofing through product design is the most reliable source of efficiency, as it is designed to detect problems at the source.

There are many ways to dig into this issue. 1) Review Agile cycle, if there's any gap and why testing timeline suffers. 2) See if company has implemented any change request time lines and if it's being followed correctly. 3) Review your QA estimates with close team members 4) always keep buffer time 5) set clear goals and timeline including various platforms testing 6) Educate risk to stack holder and project team members 7) be honest and genuine and deep about current test results 8) Add more QA bandwidth if it's still possible. 9) Define test coverage in tires based on importance. 10) try to validate on production equivalent environment. Every above points can have many other subtopics to discuss on approach.

Prioritize Testing: Focus on high-risk, critical areas first. Automate Tests: Use tools like Selenium or Cypress to automate repetitive tests. Integrate automated tests into your CI/CD pipeline. Integrate QA Early: Involve QA from the start (shift-left testing) to catch issues early. Maintain continuous feedback between developers and testers. Risk-Based Testing: Prioritize tests based on potential impact and risk. Incremental Delivery: Use agile methodologies for frequent, smaller releases with continuous testing. Use a Triage System: Regularly assess and prioritize defects based on severity and impact. Collaborate Closely: Foster strong communication and collaboration between QA and development teams.

To ensure least to no quality compromise, Focus on risk based testing. Perform series of smoke tests for the basic functionality and high impact areas. Use automation tools and suites to ensure new changes don’t break existing functionality. also automate repetitive processes. Implement pipelines for automatic test execution and rapid feedback. Also one of the major mistakes mostly done is not involving the QA in early stages, hence involving the QA in early development phase can help ensure Identifying issues early in development and catch them ripe. Encourage developers to write unit tests and conduct thorough code reviews, hence catching defects early . Use of Quality metrics and parallel tests can help make it faster.

This is the most important aspect of automation. Nowadays literally every manual tester can start do automation with the help of chatgpt, but what is funny is that the testers approach is irreplaceable by AI. What IS important to be tested and what is worth to be automated.

When starting with automation, it's crucial to decide which parts of the functionality to automate and to select the most suitable tool for the job. Without careful planning, you might end up spending more time on automation than the actual time you save.

Leverage automation tools to expedite repetitive and time-consuming tests. These tools can run a suite of tests quickly and consistently, freeing you up to focus on more complex testing scenarios that require human insight. However, remember that automation is not a panacea; it should be used judiciously to complement, not replace, manual testing efforts. Carefully select which tests to automate based on their frequency, stability, and complexity to optimize your QA process.

To ensure quality doesn't suffer when speeding up QA, leveraging automation tools is key. Focus on automating repetitive and time-consuming tests, such as regression, smoke, and sanity tests, to free up time for more critical testing activities. Use (CI/CD) pipelines to automatically run these tests whenever code changes are made, catching issues early. Implement robust test scripts and maintain them regularly to ensure they cover all critical functionalities and edge cases. Utilize tools that offer comprehensive reporting and analytics to quickly identify and address failures. Additionally, integrate automated tests with your development environment to facilitate immediate feedback and foster collaboration between developers and QA.

We have the current generation and the proposed generation of a certain part, for example. Get current part failure history in the field and test results for these parts. How similar is the current production part versus the proposed part that is now in testing? What are the critical paths (most probable failure areas)? What do the Weibull curve (shape, position and scale parameters) and FMEA say? Compare curves and FMEA and offer a Preliminary Risk Assessment. Senior leadership must approve or not, considering the support material provided.

When speeding up QA, ensure quality doesn’t suffer by adopting a risk-based testing approach. Focus on identifying and prioritizing the highest-risk areas of the application—those that are most critical to functionality and most likely to fail. Allocate more testing resources and time to these high-risk areas, while reducing effort on lower-risk components.Maintain clear communication with stakeholders to understand business priorities and potential impacts. Regularly reassess risks throughout the development cycle to adjust focus as needed, ensuring that the most crucial parts of the application receive the necessary attention to maintain quality.

Durante anos como executivo, muitas vezes já estive sob press?o para "acelerar" teste e inspe??es da qualidade e os argumentos eram diversos: - você sabe quando nos custará a entrega deste lote de produtos ao cliente? Você sabe que o navio que levará esta exporta??o n?o espera no porto? Mas, na maioria das vezes, ao analisar as causas deste problemas identificámos as promessas de entregas sem consulta às áreas internas da empresa (PCP, produ??o, compras, etc) e falta de planejamento e de um eficiente sistema de gest?o atuando desde o projeto à logística de entrega aos clientes. E o principal: a falta de um bom sistema de análise de riscos.

CPQ: The cost of poor quality is the financial impact of our defects, and we measure the risk as quantifiable financial loss.

Risk-Based Testing: Prioritize testing based on the potential impact of defects. Focus on areas that could cause significant issues if they fail.

Continuous communication facilitates empathetic problem-solving, with both sides contributing equally as valuable members of the organization.

Efficient test design involves creating testing strategies and plans that maximize the effectiveness and coverage of tests while minimizing redundancy and effort. It begins with thorough understanding of requirements and user expectations, allowing testers to prioritize critical functionalities and edge cases. Utilizing automation for repetitive tests frees up resources for more complex scenarios, ensuring thorough coverage without compromising speed. Continuous refinement based on feedback and metrics helps optimize test suites over time, making the process more efficient and responsive to changes. Ultimately, efficient test design balances thoroughness with agility, enabling teams to deliver high-quality software effectively.

Absolutely. It's essential for the QA team to periodically review their test cases to eliminate obsolete, irrelevant, or even duplicated. This is particularly important for large QA teams and rapidly growing products, where the test suite can quickly become cluttered and less effective. Regular reviews ensure that the testing process remains efficient and focused on the most critical areas.

As leader of quality you have to shift perspectives often. Yes, the business needs functionality, features, or production fixes. Yes the need them yesterday. It’s clear the urgency and reasoning from experience, reputation, or bottom line are going to make decisions that may violate the quality principles we hold, but that’s ok! We have to communicate why, and how, and we see risks in order to allow for the total picture to be clear for decision making. Be vocal, respectful, and partner. Trust me, you’re being listened to even if the answer is, “we need it now”.

. Prioritize Testing Identify Critical Areas: Focus testing efforts on high-risk and high-impact areas of the application. Prioritize features that are essential to the application’s functionality and those that have a history of issues. Risk Assessment: Perform a risk assessment to determine which parts of the application could cause the most significant damage if they fail, and prioritize testing those areas.