QA and testing terminology.
Submitted by Ainars Galvans on Tue, 13/12/2005 - 10:40.
general software testing | test management
For some years I’ve been asking myself “Why QA terms are not used consequentially?” I now believe to the following statement:
No matter how completely the terminology is described on web, in books, certification programmes (where it is quite well), etc. In practice they are used according to some purpose that only in few cases the purpose maps to definition.
Term definitions, explanations and examples only describe generic cases. Practice is never generic case (except if one create process by book, which is the worst practice I could imagine).
The only way to avoid misuse is to define custom Glossary of Term within your company (or even project) so that you all have the same reference.
My initial idea was to write article that list cases (real or theoretic) in which a company or a project invents a practice to use term in a way that don’t accord common usage. The goal was to address list of posts here and there about difference between issue/bug/defect/fault/error; QA/QC. Even term “Test Case” suites different purposes in different companies and even in one company different projects (or even single project different test levels: Unit Tests VS UAT). Instead I will only list few experiences as proof for the statement that I started the post with. You could find much more for example Bugs.... failures, faults and errors....
Examples of term misuse
QA/QC/Testing/..
Some years ago joined QA department in a company. Not sure how it got so far but the fact was that 90% of the department assignments was QC (testing). The number increased with a time as QC demand extended. When on the other hand we got demand for QA (CMM certification) a new department was created. And guess what …to maintain backward compatibility… our department is still QA, while new one is “Quality Management”.
Unit testing
Once open a time:) we escalated issue of a lot of fixed defects (10-20%) being incorrectly integrated into builds (incorrectly check-in to CVS) that we test. PM decided to add one more status for defect life-cycle: build master are now sending the defect to the developer who implemented it. Only when developer makes sure that the fix is inside the build, only then it is passed to retesting. Guess how the status is called? Unit testing! Only because this term is associated with testing developers should perform…
No matter how completely the terminology is described on web, in books, certification programmes (where it is quite well), etc. In practice they are used according to some purpose that only in few cases the purpose maps to definition.
Term definitions, explanations and examples only describe generic cases. Practice is never generic case (except if one create process by book, which is the worst practice I could imagine).
The only way to avoid misuse is to define custom Glossary of Term within your company (or even project) so that you all have the same reference.
My initial idea was to write article that list cases (real or theoretic) in which a company or a project invents a practice to use term in a way that don’t accord common usage. The goal was to address list of posts here and there about difference between issue/bug/defect/fault/error; QA/QC. Even term “Test Case” suites different purposes in different companies and even in one company different projects (or even single project different test levels: Unit Tests VS UAT). Instead I will only list few experiences as proof for the statement that I started the post with. You could find much more for example Bugs.... failures, faults and errors....
Examples of term misuse
QA/QC/Testing/..
Some years ago joined QA department in a company. Not sure how it got so far but the fact was that 90% of the department assignments was QC (testing). The number increased with a time as QC demand extended. When on the other hand we got demand for QA (CMM certification) a new department was created. And guess what …to maintain backward compatibility… our department is still QA, while new one is “Quality Management”.
Unit testing
Once open a time:) we escalated issue of a lot of fixed defects (10-20%) being incorrectly integrated into builds (incorrectly check-in to CVS) that we test. PM decided to add one more status for defect life-cycle: build master are now sending the defect to the developer who implemented it. Only when developer makes sure that the fix is inside the build, only then it is passed to retesting. Guess how the status is called? Unit testing! Only because this term is associated with testing developers should perform…