But if we were to pick just one it would likely be-

#1 The lack of clear communication– The biggest roadblock in QA by far always ends up being communication gaps,  particularly in areas of lack of mutual understanding when not conveying specific software requirements can potentially create hurdles in constructing accurate test case scenarios. 

But wait a second, understanding this monster challenge better, requires a deeper dive into the critical world of the more commonly existing QA challenges.

The commonly faced challenges in QA.

• Kickoff roadblocks– The tough task begins at this very first stage. Although the elephant in the room is pretty apparent here, it’s nevertheless imperative to have an in-depth client session before the initial testing phase sets it. We’re talking scope of work, permissions and syncing up with the client’s developers team, and setting things straight prior project onboarding.

Let’s hear it out from our team at thought frameworks- 

• Device fragmentations– The seemingly endless need to test across all device versions and browsers can seem as an impossible task in itself. Nevertheless, it’s a critical and  integral aspect to get a flawless QA testing job done the right way. Device incompatibility or overlooking critical bugs

 can make or break a product/application. 

•  Developer’s time taken– Often in-house developers tend to divert their day jobs for QA testing and end up with less time or enthusiasm for coding. Here’s where outsourcing QA testers can bridge the gap to solve this unwarranted programming delay. With QA experts in hand, the developers can focus rest assuredly on their day job well.

What our team had to say-

Q1. What are some practical challenges you face at work almost every single day?

” Environmental instabilities are real-world challenges.The lack of adequate response time from the developers end, oftentimes result in a project’s slow movement. Despite weekly calls, follow-up emails and reminders, we do face delayed responses from counterparts at times.”

-Sreevalli BS, Delivery Head QA at Thought Frameworks

• Resource limitations– Critical revenue impending bugs caused by internal gaps in resources can downgrade the overall product, platform or app quality. Poor quality being directly proportional to financial losses and in turn damages the end-user’s trust quite irrevocably.

Q2. How’s your experience and understanding with the team of developers?

“We often face issues with the development team’s productivity

Like they’re not working for 8 hours. Not meeting client expectations.

Resources & completion is a challenge too when testing modules require all functional, performance, and exploratory testing.”

 –Sreevalli BS, Delivery Head QA at Thought Frameworks

• Competitive markets– With competitors sitting just a click away. It’s imperative to get those web and mobile app conversions flowing seamlessly. Especially in the booming era of e-commerce apps fighting it out to grab user eyeballs every second.
• QA basics–  Coming in with the ideation to perform and uphold and ensuring a high quality assurance across a product line up or platform is the idyllic goal of every QA testing protocol. Although things can get weary and quite unwantedly out of hand sometimes.
• Time– The most notable complaints and challenges we often hear in relation to QA, are teams lacking in time to test adequately.

 Often the reason being lack of personnel to test comprehensively. Another reason commonly being, not necessarily having the right automation setup in place or seemingly assuming it to be the only catch-up solution for all the impending problems.

When it comes to the time taken to test, including device and browser coverage, in-house developers that are taking up QA efforts, and working overtime hours in a day will all eventually add up.

Hypothetically, If a team needs to test for all of the newest versions of web and mobile devices and browsers, the team is either endlessly stuck with the overhead cost of updating their device farmyard, or are solely relying on simulation softwares to provide accurate representations of the customer UI. Now not only is the former case expensive, it’s also endlessly time consuming. On the other hand, the latter option is more seemingly scalable but a less accurate simulated depiction of a real-time customer experience.

Additionally, QA can seriously become a roadblock challenge for backend engineering teams, in case when in-house developers are stuck combing through a product for bugs opposed to focusing on the next build. In the ideal world developers should be looking ahead at programming what’s next, and not get stuck endlessly critiquing their own creations. 

Lastly, even with a fully scaled QA process or an in-house team, there are only limited hours in the day and only limited time allotments to dedicated QA resources. 

Maybe cases and scenarios when you 

need to deliver testing overnight, or over the weekend, over the holidays? These duties are simply difficult to impart upon an in-house team. This is where a professional QA test team dedicatedly steps in.

Q3. What is the biggest fallacy when appointing an in-house test team ?

“Unstable product requirements

and inadequate test coverage feature within the security function testing challenges.

Both short term challenges need to be addressed while executing both functional and performance testing at the same time.”

–Sreevalli BS, Delivery Head QA at Thought Frameworks

• Testers-  Oftentimes one can argue over the ratio between the comprehensiveness of testing and the number of personnel available to provide this testing. Scalability is often a critical challenge in software testing, as the number of testers per test cycle can directly impact both the time taken to receive results alongside the quality and the overall completeness of the findings.

Even with a team having a robust personnel count dedicated solely to QA, how often can tests be running? Eventually, any team will hit full capacity, with a backlog of scheduled tests. One ingenious way of avoiding this is starting off with an unlimited testing model, something that is only possible with multiple testing in phases in particular.

Q4. Work hours challenges? Language barriers: how do you guys deal with it all?

‘A common challenge we face is localisation testing, like local language barriers, especially dealing with foreign languages.

Working for different time zones can be hard too.

But being used to it for years now we have few effective measures in place.”

 –Prashanth P Associate Process Practice Manager @ Thought Frameworks 

• Automation– Many test teams don’t have automation in place yet and supposedly assume it to be the answer to everything. Although they may be lacking the time or resources to set it running efficiently. Many test teams don’t simply have the surplus time to manage automation and prepare  subsequent documentation especially when they’re trying to move quickly. With every minor change, a given test case might be potentially affected. This challenge often necessitates some hands-on-deck taking over for all subsequent changes. Even with issues as simple as broken links (that occur due to changes in content functionality on the websites), can be really hard to keep up without a large dedicated QA test team that’s keeping a tab on all, including even minor, product changes

If kickoff conversations with clients have taught us anything, it’s that – if we want to see real time improvements in the QA process, we must address the common challenges faced by most test teams. Reducing the time taken to test effectively, outsourcing QA to professional and dedicated test team vendors, and simultaneously supporting the development of automation processes is the way to move forward. 

Q5. What’s the importance of updating in the world of QA?

”  There’s staff augmentation,

resorting to bigger challenges. Including domain related issues and how we handle it.

The simple answer is- keep updating!

With regular domain related changes, UI changes happen almost weekly or even daily.

While the releases are pre-scheduled and  prior planned, very frequently sudden changes are also made which is a challenge in itself to upkeep. But we do so unabashedly.

 –Prashanth P, Associate Process Practice Manager @Thought Frameworks 

CONCLUSION

Things to take away….

Remember,  no QA process is picture perfect, but changes in QA technology — outsourcing to skilled professional test teams for one — are beginning to address the above challenges, while allowing them to scale up and move ahead much more quickly, with fewer constraints on personnel, finances, and most importantly time.

Thought Frameworks is a commanding US based organization in business since 2009,  powered with the ultimate solutions for all your software testing challenges. With headquartered in California and a fully functional well equipped QA Test Lab in Bengaluru-India, delivering premium QA & QC services endlessly across different domains. An ISTQB Partnered Company, our superhuman test team has delivered numerous QA & QC projects across the globe.

Designing services to fit like a glove, we tailor and custom make test solutions. Backed by our ingenious bug hunting process helping your softwares in clocking release cycle time while delivering excelling quality.