R: Reporter
V: Vera Xie, Team leader (Application Assessment), China
R: We all know the importance of software testing. What is the most memorable chaos you had seen in your work?
V: Yes, I think it is very important and necessary to conduct a full test before delivering software to users. In terms of chaos, by most memorable, I think it is also the most frequent. Many times, we have to go the extra mile for our clients on certain projects. This happens when our client gives us no requirement documents to follow; fuzzy code with few or no comments to review; and an ever-changing deadline that only got pushed earlier than later. Of course, to say that we handled all these without a sweat would be lying, but we got them handled.
To ensure the deliverable quality, we pull in extra resource and insist on a well-planned procedure for software testing projects. On code review, we understand every line through internal discussion and propose more than one solution to clients for confirmation. At the same time, our testing engineers compose testing cases or checklist to reach agreement with all project team members. In unit testing, developers follow up the cases with high priority; in system testing, testing engineers verify all test cases again carefully. Thus, customer’s satisfaction can be guaranteed.
R: Unlike the development teams, the Software Testing team in Axisoft accepts challenges from all sorts of software regardless of its development tools. How do you handle the pressure?
V: Yes, it is a great pressure to the team. The testing methodology is universal to all software, but it is also vital to be familiar with the design or developing technology to dig out the potential logic bugs. Due to its obvious importance, the SAT team has never stopped learning popular and critical technical knowledge from other developers or through self-studying.
R: What kind of software testing does your team offer to clients?
V: I think we can help clients improve their software quality through numerous testing methodologies. Such as:
Manual or automated function testing (Quick Test Professional, IBM Rational Robot or Mercury WinRunner), performance testing, (Mercury LoadRunner) etc. Besides, we can provide system security / performance, network security / performance assessment and code review services.
R: Software testing can be an endless process. So how do you draw the line? What is the perfect balance between thorough testing and well time management?
V: Yes, it is an endless and tedious work, but I think this career offers a special challenge. We feel a great sense of achievement when we find out any potential bug. ‘ASAP (as soon as possible), AMAP (as much as possible)’ are our mottoes.
To maintain the perfect balance, testing plan and test cases with priority will be prepared before testing. Suppose a short testing cycle covers 5 days, a smoking testing about major functions will be conducted at the 1st day, then there will be the full test, followed by the test cases if the full test got passed (or this build cancelled if failed, a bug report will be generated to the client at that point). Last but not least, a complete testing report with overall comments will be composed.
R: Thank you very much for your time with us.
V: Thank you very much.
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