In a company if you don't have hard core written Sytem requirements and the product keep on changing,new feeatures are added without testers knowledge ,in such situation how do you test applications?

Joshna

• Mar 17th, 2006

 

Such situations would normally not arise if a company follows certain standards to maintain quality.. Mostly after a certain stage the requirements are loced i.e they cannot undergo future requirements. Incase such situations arise wherin it is very important to cange the requirement after the specifications have been locked(its calledSpec complete).. It would go tru higher authorities who would decide on various factors like if the requirement really needs to be incorporated etc.. And if it has to be incorporated it would also lead to various changes in the test plan..

Incase a company doesnt follow such standard(ie spec coplete & lock) in that case the customer needs to be highly felxible so does the scheduled date of release of the product needs to be flexible..

Gary

• Mar 18th, 2006

 

This seems to be the most apt real life scenario. We are often faced with such situations in our day to day work. A right interview answer would be to to look at it from the customer's point of view and make sure he is informed of the impact of the changes in requirements as per the schedule and effort because of the rework to be done. The strategy should be to cover almost all possible areas that might be affected because of the change and to still keep the rework involved to the minimum. It however still will involve changes in the test scripts, some more execution effort and resultant changes in the allocation and schedule. It is however a scenario most likely unavoidable in any big project and from the managerial perspective some amount of buffer should be kept in the Project Plan due to changes in requirements.CheersGary

sangam_sridhar

 Profile Answers by sangam_sridhar 

• Mar 27th, 2006

 

1. Work with project management early on to understand how requirements might change so that alternate test plan strategies can be worked out in advance

?2. Use rapid prototyping whenever possible to help customers feel sure of their requirements and minimize changes

3. Try to move new requirements to Phase 2 or Next Version of an application

?Negotiate to allow only easily implemented new requirements in the project

?4. Ensure that Customer and Management understand the scheduling impact, inherent risks and costs of significant changes

5. Try to concentrate more on Automation testing efforts

?6. Spend time in Risk Analysis of changes to minimize Regression test efforts

?7. Focus less time in writing Test Plans and more on Ad hoc Testing