30 Oct
Remote quality assurance testing set-up
Covid-19 has pushed most of the businesses to switch to remote working culture and the software development enterprises were no different, despite the change in working conditions, development teams couldn’t afford losing productivity and hence switching to remote set-up for QA testing was their best bet.
Setting up a remote quality assurance team can be a tedious task, specially if the employees are getting used to the new normal of working remotely.
We have summed up the challenges faced by remote quality assurance team and how to overcome these challenges below:
Challenges faced by quality assurance testers/organisation in working remotely
1. Home-Office Setup
Setting up a home office can be a daunting task for some employees as not every employee owns a dedicated home-office setup and most organizations are not willing to bear the extra costs for setup. Hence, it became an extra burden for all the employees switching to remote work due to Covid-19
2. Connectivity
Connectivity can be a big problem for remote workers as most workers are from areas where high-speed internet is not mainstream as of yet and switching to remote working suddenly due to the pandemic gave chills to some employees, mostly because of the unavailability of an internet connection which is suitable for working remotely considering every other task will require a high or moderate speed internet connection
3. Security
Security became a big concern for remote workers as most of the connections or tools are not end-to-end encrypted which created a major concern for many organizations
4. Effective Collaboration
Another major setback for remote workers was an effective collaboration between all the employees of an organization as most of the workers are new to the remote working culture and were not aware or fairly new to the tools which can be used for effective collaboration while working remotely
5. Delays in Communication and Support
Instant communication and support play a major role in the overall performance of any organization. The current trend of remote working saw an increase in the delay in communication among the employees due to a variety of reasons ranging from internet connectivity, working schedule, little or no practical knowledge of remote working tools, and use of communication tools that are not user friendly and are highly complicated
How to overcome the challenges of Remote QA Testing?
1. Maintaining a Professional Virtual Environment
The key to keep up with the standards previously set by the organization is to maintain a professional environment even while working remotely which includes a set working schedule as per the requirements, transparency, honesty, and most importantly a professional working ethic in a virtual environment
2. Patience and Trust
Trust among coworkers plays a major role while working remotely. Any organization which lacks trust among its workers is bound to fail irrespective of the talent or potential it possesses. Patience is also a key factor in this current remote working culture as most employees are not accustomed to the trends and tools of remote working and giving co-workers enough time and space to complete any task plays a major role in the overall performance of the organization
3. Reliable Collaboration and Chat Tools
Tools used by any organization for collaboration and communication determines the quality of workflow of the particular organization and it is necessary to rely on tools which are user friendly and trusted with a proven success rate
4. Keeping Everyone Involved
The key to work collaboratively while working remotely is to keep everyone involved and in the loop as perspectives are important as per as software development is concerned and can be a huge plus in the overall software development life cycle
5. Visual Representation
As per statistics, visual information is processed 60,000 times faster by the human brain than normal texts and tools which gives the flexibility to track and address bugs and issues visually increases the efficiency among remote workers in turn reducing the overall completion time to a great extent
How is the current trend of remote testing a blessing in disguise?
1. Flexible and Transparent
The remote working tools for quality assurance testing have made the process very flexible with features like the assignment of tasks, team announcements, real-time remote collaboration, comments, and much more which makes the overall process very flexible and transparent among all the remote workers of the organization
2. Instant Rectification and Announcement
Tools like Zipboard, Practitest allows testers to instantly report or announce a bug and assign it to a tester who is responsible for rectification of the specific bug and all of which can be done instantly without having to worry about communication delays or improper instructions regarding rectification.
organizations despite a change in the working culture
3. Time-Saving
The current trend of working remotely is highly time-saving due to the availability of QA testing tools like Xray, Testpad, Testrail which are fully or partially automated and are seen to reduce the overall software development life cycle time
4. New tools and learning opportunities
Covid-19 has allowed workers to learn and gain practical knowledge about some quality assurance tools which otherwise would have been unknown to them.
pandemic is over mostly due to the performance and growth of these
5. Futuristic
The tools which are currently being used by remote workers are mostly futuristic and will be a great plus for the organization/testers moving forward, as these tools are bound to be a necessity for most organizations which are looking to a fully or partially remote working culture even after the pandemic is over
How zipBoard can be your go-to answer for all the woes of Remote Quality Assurance Testing?
1. View exactly where the reported issue is and reproduce quickly
2. Get all feedback and bug reports at one place
3. Get feedback from all stakeholders - technical and non-technical at one place
©️ Copyright 2023 zipBoard Tech. All rights reserved.