[Server-devel] A good intro to QA?

[Kim Quirk]

Hi Bryan,
My best advice to you is to document everything you do. Use a spreadsheet or
a wiki page if you don't have a good database system.

Here are some of the thinks I have found useful:

1 - Document the test case separately from its execution (you'll find some
test cases in links below)
2 - For each execution of a test, track the date, time, build information,
and any setup, initialization that you might have done before starting, and
the result
3 - When you do find problems, you can recreate the run -- and you have all
the info for a good bug report. Link the test case run to the bug report.
4 - Document the bugs found and how to work around them in human readable
form (so the next person, with less technical background doesn't have to go
through what you did) - this level of documentation becomes the 'release
note' for a build.

Item #4 is really, really important since we never get to a bugless product
-- but if we understand the bug and can explain work arounds, then the
quality of the system just improved tremendously.

Since you are doing this focused effort... please add your findings to the
release notes that have been started for build 703:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Update.1_Software_Release_Notes

For things to test, please look at the wiki pages with test scenarios for
both the XO and the XS:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User_Stories_Testing (use case testing. This might
be where you want to start; including the 1 hour smoke test)
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Update.1
(links to many other test cases; skim this to decide where you want to
focus. Items here are more technical, less 'use case')
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Schoolserver_Testing

Also, use the 'Testing' link from the main page to skim around all the ideas
related to testing. Please understand that we haven't had anyone keeping up
all these pages so some tests will be out of date. If you can fix any of
them up (based on how the product really works today), or if you want to add
some, that would be great!

Focus on the things that are important for your deployment first.

Good luck! Hope you find things to add to the release notes for others!
Kim


On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 6:30 AM, Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com> wrote:

> I will spend the next 7 days locked in our office doing QA on 150 XO's,
> the XS, and our Access Points.
>
> I don't have much work experience doing large-scale QA. Can someone
> point me to a free on-line resource of how to do it well?
>
> thanks
>
> Bryan
> Kathmandu
>
> _______________________________________________
> Server-devel mailing list
> Server-devel at lists.laptop.org
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>
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