If There Isn’t Enough Time To Test !

What to do when there is not enough time for a critical bug fix test just a few days before release?

Partway through your test cycle, everything going smooth and all tasks accomplished at a high success rate but suddenly just before few days to release,

Your manage or alpha tester and internal ad hoc tester found a critical issue and without that fix, the release could not make it.

Set up a meeting, Impact Analysis,

Actors: Project Manger/lead, QA manager/lead, Development manager/lead

It involves analyzing the impact of changes made in features/modules in the application. 

• Analyzing modules with the help of impact analysis documents. It will find the risks associated with any kind of changes in a module/product due to a fixed defect.
• It also helps to implement a prototype for the developers and testers to experience the effects in the system.

Conclusion:

1. Find out the critical fix area.

- Point out the responsibility of the fixed function(s) and associations of same fixed function(s) with other functions within the same module i.e. green area. 

2. Find out the impacted areas/modules due to the critical fix.

- Point out the how many function(s) are affected due to green area fixed function(s) in orange and purple area and what are the effected function(s) responsibilities.

If area/module(s) are equally impacted;

Maybe both impacted modules are sharing the same fixed function.

Test Plan Approach:

Green Module: Smoke Test or End-To-End Test.

Orange or Purple Module: Sanity Test

Here we can customized out Sanity Test:

1. Sanity Test = Regression Test Cases for only effecting function.

2. Sanity Test = Whole system Regression Test - Whole system Negative Regression Test Cases. 

3. Sanity Test = Regression Test Cases for only effecting function - Negative Regression Test Cases for only effecting function.

If area/module(s) are partially impacted;

Maybe partially impacted modules are sharing the return value or function parameter(s) from the highly impacted module due to fixed-function in green module.

Test Plan Approach:

Green Module: Smoke Test or End-To-End Test.

Orange Module : Sanity Test

Purple Module: Smoke Test or End-To-End Test or Ad-Hoc Test.

Here we can customized out Sanity Test as before:

1. Sanity Test = Regression Test Cases for only effecting function.

2. Sanity Test = Whole system Regression Test - Whole system Negative Regression Test Cases. 

3. Sanity Test = Regression Test Cases for only effecting function - Negative Regression Test Cases for only effecting function.

Conclusion:

Impact Analysis is a mandatory phase and crucial point where we can derive our test plan in a limited amount of time to minimize our release risk.

Test plan selection could be changed or customized with the same approach.