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.
