Quality Assurance Legacy - 30 Years of Tips and Tricks to Make QA Easier

When companies are in trouble management starts cutting expenses. Quality Assurance departments, groups and teams are often viewed as “cost centers” and not “profit centers”; in other words, an expense that can be cut. Ensuring that your QA team and department runs efficiently and effectively will make sure that QA is viewed as a “profit center”, an essential part of the company, and not as something extra to be cut at the slightest hint of trouble.

Quality Assurance teams use various tools such as bug trackers and test case repositories. Many such tools are available and marketed, but rarely do you find a tool that combines both a bug tracker and test case repository successfully. Most of these applications are good in one area and weak in the other area which will delay and hamper your QA efforts. If they do combine both functions successfully the application is very expensive and beyond the budget of most QA organizations. Each bug tracker or test case repository individually has great power if setup, implemented and used properly. This article will discuss the situation where the bug tracker and test case repository are separate applications and how to use each efficiently and effectively and then how to use each to complement the other.