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Sunday, October 09, 2011

Communication leads to Test Coverage, not just Requirements.

How many of us thought that Test Coverage is important? And Test Coverage comes just from Requirements?

We are always behind Requirements...Requirements...Requirements and just Requirements. We expect the Requirements to be in the form of a MS Word doc and may be a PDF and may be a PPT and may be an Excel and nothing else. We are so used to these few things that we see nothing beyond these.

What else could lead to Test Coverage?

We often ignore Communication. Communication is a tool, an important tool for your test coverage. Oral Communication, Written Communication and sometimes, even SMS could be a communication medium to record the Requirements for test coverage.

Not all Requirements could come from Requirement docs, not always at least. There are instances when customers have emailed the stakeholders with some additional requirements that were not covered in the actual requirements document.

Usually, we have calls with our Customers to discuss so many things. The Customers could be from across the geographic locations. Understanding them, their voice, their language, their accent etc. makes the difference and how well we convert them into our understanding for the test coverage, matters most. I have even had a chat conversation on a communicator to discuss things that have been possibly be a "Requirement".

The medium of communication is not important here. What's important is how well we gather the "communication" and document it and then share it as just "Minutes of Meeting" or a Word doc or a Scenario/s or even a test case/s.

There is no right or wrong way of understanding requirements as long as it suffices the Business Needs of the Customer.