Software testing lesson

Last month I got one bug report and need urgent fix. I do the quick fix in one day and request patch. Patch come out next week. It’s a bug in multi-thread mode which only occur when running in 16 threads or 32 threads. My fix is kind of workaround due to it’s hard to come out quick fix and make sure it’s perfect. Real fix comes out in the same week when patch process finished.

And then I happen to saw there exist one training held in three weeks later. I applied. The tutor is QA team manager from global anti-virus software company in Taiwan. He gave quick and broad walk-through within 12 hours course. It’s helpful for me. But in fact, to me it still too general style of QA manager or process.

The most surprising things I learned is the book I read recently - How Google Tests Software.

The most difference is that author explain the environment inside Google that QA/SET resources is in short and it looks it’s intent. SET resource will be given only when the project becomes more important. And treat develop better quality software as top priority will make project more possible to get the QA resources.

And the author also explain the although there exist many role inside the whole software development process, the customer only see the product. If it works and works wonderfully, it’s a good product. If it does not works great, it’s not a good product. And the responsibility goes to every team members.

Everyone.

Back to the urgent patch I encountered. The customer found it. And it’s my fault not test it totally in each threads in development. Our QA member helped to create customized simple test case to reproduce the issue and gave me instruction to get more resource. Project manager help to push the product team to speed up the patch creation process. Our application engineer help to cope with customer for better solution to prevent the issue.

This patch gives me a lesson how customer see our product and we need to work as one when facing our customers.

I keep read other books about software testing. Lessons Learned in Software Testing is the one tutor recommend. And I start to re-think about how to work with our team member to provide more robust process to deliver better quality in future.

And I still don’t know whether our QA member can see the source code or not. Next time I will try to provide more detail documents.

Keep learning.