Manual and Automation Testing Challenges.

1) Testing the Complete Application

Is that possible? That’s indeed impossible. There are millions of test combinations.

It is not possible to test each and every combination in both Manual as well as Automation Testing. If you try all these combinations you will never ship the product ??

2) Misunderstanding of Company Processes

Sometimes you just don’t pay proper attention to what the company-defined processes are and for what purposes they are.

There are some myths in testers that they should only go with the company processes even if these processes are not applicable for their current testing scenario. This results in incomplete and inappropriate Application Testing.

3) Relationship with Developers

It’s indeed a big challenge. It requires a very skilled tester to handle this relationship positively and even by completing the work in a tester’s way.

There are simply hundreds of excuses that the developers or testers can make when they do not agree with some points. For this, the tester also requires Good Communication, Troubleshooting and analyzing skills.

4) Regression Testing

If a project continues to expand, then regression testing work simply becomes uncontrolled. There will be pressure to handle current functionality changes, previous working functionality checks, and bug tracking.

5) Lack of Skilled Testers

This could be called as a “wrong management decision” while selecting or training testers for their project task in hand.

These unskilled fellows may add more chaos than simplifying the testing work. This results in incomplete, insufficient and ad-hoc testing throughout the Testing Life Cycle.

6) Testing always under Time Constraint

Hey tester, we want to ship this product by this weekend, are you ready for completion?

When this order is from the boss, the tester simply focuses on task completion and not on the test coverage and quality of work. There is a huge list of tasks that you need to complete within the specified time. This includes writing, executing, automating and reviewing test cases.

7) Which Tests to Execute First?

If you are facing the challenge stated in point no 6, then how will you decide which test cases should be executed and with what priority? Which tests are more important than others? This requires a good experience to work under pressure.

8) Understanding the Requirements

Sometimes testers are responsible for communicating with customers to understand the requirements.

What if the tester fails to understand the requirements? Will he be able to test the application properly? Definitely not! Testers require good listening and understanding capabilities.

9) Automation Testing

Many sub-challenges – Should automate the testing work? Until what level, should automation be done?

Do you have sufficient and skilled resources for Automation? Is time permissible for automating the test cases? The decision of Automation or Manual Testing will need to address the pros and cons of each process.

10) Decision to Stop Testing

When to stop testing?

This is a very difficult decision. Requires core judgment of testing processes and the importance of each process. It also requires an “on the fly” decision ability.

11) One Test Team under Multiple Projects

It is quite challenging to keep track of each task. Communication challenges are also involved. Many times, it results in failure of one or both the projects.

12) Reuse of Test Scripts

Application development methods are changing rapidly, thereby making it difficult to manage the test tools and test scripts. Test script migration or reuse is a very essential but difficult task.

13) Testers Focusing on Finding Easy Bugs

If the organization is rewarding testers based on the number of bugs (very bad approach for judging Testers Performance) then some testers only concentrate on finding easy bugs that don’t require deep understanding and testing.

Hard or subtle bugs remain unnoticed in such a testing approach.

14) To Cope with Attrition

Increasing salaries and the other benefits make many employees leave the company at very short career intervals. Management faces hard problems to cope with the attrition rate. Challenges – New testers require project training from the beginning, as complex projects are difficult to understand, thereby leading to delay in shipping date!

These are some of the top Software Testing challenges that we face daily. Project success or failure depends largely on how you address these basic issues.

For further reference and detailed solutions to these challenges, refer to the book “Surviving the Top Ten Challenges of Software Testing” written by William E. Perry and Randall W. Rice.

Conclusion

Most of them are working on the Manual and/or Automation Testing field. Although we have addressed many of the above challenges in our previous tutorials, we want your views on handling these Software Testing challenges.