Page - 108 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

108 A. Morgavi Setting frequent short calls could perfectly avoid long email chains in which it is easy to lose thesequenceandgenerateconfusinginformationwithoutsolving the issues.Teamsshould takepart inplanningandeffortestimationmeetings.Thiswill allowtohavea realistic feedbackon thepossibilitiesandacquire their commitment with set goals. On the other hand, it is fundamental to definea focalpoint of the offshore team, that is the contact person with whom you can review the progress of tasks, issues and delays that might appear. Soft Skills, among other competences, is a must for theposition. 5 HowtoMaximize Productivity of theOffshore Team? 5.1 AboutRequirements WhenanoffshoreteamassumesFunctionalTestingtasks,beyondtheinitial training that I have already mentioned in the previous sections, it will be necessary for the team to have clear requirementseither in the form of use cases, user stories or any other formatdependingon theproject. An incomplete, unclear or obsolete requirement is a source of problems. It will surelygeneratedelaysandreworkin the tasks tobecarriedout later. “Requirements Review”is inmyopinionanextremelyefficientpractice.If theinformationreceived is not enough to define some test cases, development will be facing the same problem as the testing team, since for sure something would be missing or wrong and this lack of clarity will also impact the development. The key is to avoid disconnected creativity and work on a common base agreed upon by all parties involved. When this matter remains unsolved, Development and Testing might have their owndifferentunderstandingofwhatismissing.Thus,whenlaterexecutingthetests, we will find ourselves reporting defects that are not real and missing defects that mustbe reported. Regardlessof the developmentmethodologyused, requirementsmust be always clear, completeandconcise. 5.2 How toDesign Test Cases We know that there isn’t a single, unique correct way of designing test cases. This issueshouldbepartof training ifnecessary.Whenwehavedifferent teamsworking on one same project, we need to unify criteria for test cases design, defining the level of detail to be used when designing the cases and the information they will contain.