How To Improve Test Productivity Using Software Testing Tools. 8 Easy Ways

by TestFortExpert on 02/24/2012

Here is the question: what is the difference between the use of software testing tools and a car production plant? Today car plants are considered to be one of the most productive working environments in the world. However there is still a great commitment to manual aspects of building cars, taking into consideration today’s overall automation and robotic capabilities. You may find this fact astonishing, knowing that cars have been built since 1890’s.

Look at a modern car plant. How much attention is given to the workplace, how good is it equipped for the worker? Everything is arranged so that the workers can be as productive as possible. Every instrument that is needed lies so that it can be reached out immediately. Instruments are even set out in such a way that a worker should make minimum movements to reach it. Because every tiny improvement concerning a working environment brings benefit for the whole production.

What about your software testing environment? When was the last time you looked at it? When did you last try to bring in some trivial changes that could serve to greater improvements for the team?

So, here are eight examples of how software testing tools can be used to increase the productivity of a QA team.

Check the process. Are there any irrelevant forms to be filled in, data capture requirement that are not really needed? For some teams data capture requirements (requested by the management) meant spending almost every day on filling out 10 different forms. Does this happen in your team as well?
Make sure that there is a special communicating tool that simplifies the process of communication between a tester and other members of company. Save QA member time, so that he doesn’t need to move from application to email developers, asking questions. Plus there is another benefit – anyone can participate in discussion, therefore a chain of common messages is created.
Set up escalation rules within your tools to recognize current scenarios that should be dealt with. For instance, make the sending of notification emails automated for high priority test cases that haven’t been run in a fixed period of time. This helps team leaders to reduce time which is used for manually identifying such cases.
Use software testing tools that collect all data in one place. Maybe you have to collect results and therefore you need to collect the time taken for execution as well. Can you use in this case a test management tool that collects all of this data in one place?
Stimulate people from outside the QA team to proactively supply QA engineers with necessary data. For example, developers should put design specs in one common location, customer issues should be delivered to team completely and so on. Mini improvements in this area can save hours of wasted time searching for information.
Make separate reports and dashboards for every team member to meet the requirements of every QA engineer. The aim in this issue is to help tester save time while looking for execution statistics.
Think of a system that will get answers to questions quickly. Simplify the process of entrusting tasks to other departments; communicate via chat tools and forums for better time saving.

Automate test environment installation process. It saves the time of the whole team if it works together, but also it prevents the possibility of testing with the wrong environment.

There were given only a couple of examples, but the main aim of this article is to encourage you to provide small innovations that will help to improve the process of working. Implement small changes every day, look at the software testing tools you use from a new perspective, add something. Improve your work!

Feel free to add anything you think is important in the comments below.

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