QA Process Management - The Challenges Encountered (Summary)

Summarily, the challenges faced during these stages fell into three categories:

• Category I- Team Collaboration: Conducting effective Testing Cycle, generation of good quality Test Cases, sharing and creation of the numerous indispensable information assets of the QA process required a high degree of collaboration among Quality Managers, Developers, Test Case Reviewers and Testers.

• Category II- Information Assets Management: Host of documents formed an integral part of the QA Cycle

• Test Plan
• Detailed Feature Specifications
• Test Case
• Test Case Review Template

Documents generated as an output of the QA Cycle included

• Test Logs
• Defects Tracking Sheet
• Session Reports
• QA Reports

For process consistency and uniformity, well-defined standards in the form of published templates or documentation guidelines were needed for each of these assets. Also mandatory for each, was a create-approve-publish document lifecycle. Post QA Cycle, archiving of assets in a secure, well-organized repository was needed. Search, security and tracking of assets were basic requirements on such a repository.

• Category III- Scheduling, Execution and Tracking of Test Plans: The actual Test Cycle needed to be planned, approved, efficiently executed, and tracked.
In the existing work scenario collaboration and planning happened through formal or informal meetings, asset sharing and management through mails or shared file servers all of which were cumbersome to track, slow and time inefficient.