Pareto's Principle: The QA Edition

Earlier this month, I started reading The 2 Minute Tester book, written by fellow software test advocate David Bruce . Whilst the book covers a lot of sensical information and expertise in the art of testing, it also provides us with a lot of useful reminders. In previous posts, myself and Fortitude 17 Limited have touched on topics including test coverage, test suites and other closely associated subjects. One thing of particular focus was around the ‘happy path’ within testing.

The ‘happy path’, also known as the ‘golden path’ (change out the first [superfluous] adjective as you wish), is often centric to many testers’ test cases and test suites. This isn’t incorrect per se, but it’s unlikely to be the best course of action nor the best use of resource, time and money.

In my time within the Microsoft Dynamics realm, we have found a substantial number of defects that Microsoft had yet to find. How can that be, you might ask? A giant in the tech world and a version of Dynamics 365 that has been in the market since 2015/16, yet my small test teams have managed to find bugs not on record with Microsoft. To me, that’s not too alarming. If you’ve worked with Dynamics 365, you will be well aware that the off-the-shelf version of the product is largely pretty stable - you know, prior to connecting integrations, loading data and making customisations. The spine of the system (and each module) works as should, right? This is because the happy path has been tested and tested under extreme load and scrutiny, all in-house before Microsoft launched the latest version of Dynamics. 

Defects are found in production when nuances or eventualities haven’t been considered to date. To highlight a few examples, this usually occurs when your test team haven’t been onboarded early enough onto the project, elected SMEs aren’t confident in sharing requirements or when a client’s UAT team aren’t invited to share feedback or collaborate effectively.

To quote a phrase in the book, “Too often testers focus on their testing from a 80% happy path approach and 20% negative. This focuses testing in the wrong direction.”

It’s not enough to simply ‘test’ a system or provide coverage, invest in the right resource to facilitate a sensible approach to the right areas to test and let them lead the business in the right direction. The level of quality will shine through.