Interview Questions

In QA team, everyone talks about process. What exactly they are taking about? Are there any different type of process?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs


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In QA team, everyone talks about process. What exactly they are taking about? Are there any different type of process?


Answer1:
When you talk about "process" you are generally talking about the actions used to accomplish a task.
Here's an example: How do you solve a jigsaw puzzle?
You start with a box full of oddly shaped pieces. In your mind you come up with a strategy for matching two pieces together (or no strategy at all and simply grab random pieces until you find a match), and continue on until the puzzle is completed.
If you were to describe the *way* that you go about solving the puzzle you would be describing the process.
Some follow-up questions you might think about include things like:
- How much time did it take you to solve the puzzle?
- Do you know of any skills, tricks or practices that might help you solve the puzzle quicker?
- What if you try to solve the puzzle with someone else? Does that help you go faster, or slower? (why or why not?) Can you have *too* many people on this one task?
- To answer your second question, I'll ask *you* the question: Are there different ways that people can solve a jigsaw puzzle?
There are many interesting process-related questions, ideas and theories in Quality Assurance. Generally the identification of workplace processes lead to the questions of improvement in efficiency and productivity. The motivation behind that is to try and make the processes as efficient as possible so as to incur the least amount of time and expense, while providing a general sense of repeatability, visibility and predictability in the way tasks are performed and completed.
The idea behind this is generally good, but the execution is often flawed. That is what makes QA so interesting. You see, when you work with people and processes, it is very different than working with the processes performed by machines. Some people in QA forget that distinction and often become disillusioned with the whole thing.
If you always remember to approach processes in the workplace with a people-centric view, you should do fine.


Answer2:
There is:
* Waterfall
* Spiral
* Rapid prototype
* Clean room
* Agile (XP, Scrum, ...)

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