The beauty of any software testing is your ability to track the progress being made. If you cannot track your progress, then it would be difficult to know how much success is being recorded and also when your set goal has been achieved. Here is an introduction about the Software testing progress tracking and its PDF tutorial version.
Software tracking involves everything we do as testers to measure the planned against the actual over time. The role we play will usually determine what we track. For instance, if it is for quality assurance, we will be interested in tracking the progress of test cases, defects, man-hours, and the rest. But if we are financial investors, our interest would be to track how much money has been spent. In a nutshell, tracking would involve anything that is connected to results and the efforts put into getting the results. Below are some of the things you would love to track.
Track Planned hours/Actual hours:
It is necessary to track what we planned for versus what eventually we ended up spending. This will help us determine whether we were able to achieve our goals within or outside the set time. Tracking man-hour will help us discover any deviations and also know why the deviations exist in the first place. It is possible that deviations could occur from only certain testers, and possibly with testers handling just a specific part of the software. There is also the possibility of deviations occurring on certain days of the week. Whatever form the deviation takes, it helps us to get useful information that could point to a specific type of problem, thereby providing a clue on how to handle them.
Track Man-hours/Test case executed:
Tracking man-hour versus test case executed is also important. There is always that desire to try and force down this aspect in order to reduce cost. However, we must always have it at the back of the mind that making this faster does not usually mean that you are going to have higher quality software.
Track Test cases executed/Planned:
If you want to ensure that you get the least amount done as far as executing our test cases, then there is the need to track the test cases executed versus the planned. If the cases are taking too long to execute regularly, then all is not well; a change is needed. Besides, going faster on a regular basis also indicates that something might be wrong with the test cases, especially when no defects are found or detected.
Track Test cases executed/Defects found:
This metric just shows how good our test cases are in regards to their ability to detect or find defects. When you run a test case and no defects are found, it does not translate to the fact that defects do not exist in the software. Same is true if you run a test case with a low ratio of defects found.
Conclusion
Tracking software testing progress is necessary in order to know whether the set target is met or not. It also enables testers to detect when there are defects that need to be corrected.
