What Is Test Documentation and Why Do We Need It?
Tags: testing
Published: 2021-10-08 12:19:49

Just like in any other process, documentation in QA helps teams organize their work. It helps to standardize the process, clarify the terminology, establish milestones, and keep all team members posted. Below, you will find a brief overview of the artifacts used during the QA process and learn how they make our lives easier. 

## What Is Test Documentation?

**Test documentation** is a set of artifacts prepared before the testing and throughout the process. Test documentation describes the test coverage and execution process, lists the essentials, quotes the basic terminology, etc. In other words, every team member can address test documentation to find the complete information regarding all the testing activities that ever happened or will take place in the future. 

## Why Is Test Documentation Important?

Testing without documentation makes it difficult to see the complete picture of the project. Unless you have clear objectives, a step-by-step plan to achieve them, and all the important conditions specified in a document, an outcome remains blurry. Every person may have a different understanding of the common goal and an end product. 

Meanwhile, test documentation defines what is critical for us and why, what activities we are to run and how much time we have. Finally, we know what the team should achieve and what signals about the end of the process. 

Both QA engineers and clients can aim for completely bug-free functionality. However, it is a myth, not a feasible objective. Thus, it makes more sense to discuss what would define the end of the QA phase – running tests for the complete functionality once, testing until we get no critical bugs on production or a fast check of business-critical features that allows you to fit in the tight deadlines. 

As a rule, trying to specify this through messages or calls isn’t effective. It’s all about the human factor. Some have too much information to process and remember. The others may misunderstand the agreements. As a result, everyone ends up with their own interpretation of the requirements and goals. 

The lack of documentation can seriously affect the work of the QA engineers, especially when working with complex products or under frequently changing requirements. A failure to understand how a feature should behave and why leads to more errors. Prioritizing the wrong part of the functionality results in skipping defects and providing incomplete reports. The examples can go on and on.

## What Test Documentation Do QA Teams Use? 

The most frequently used artifacts are test plans, checklists, test cases, use cases, bug reports, and requirement specifications. 

### Test Plan

A **test plan** describes all the test activities within one project. Here, you can find information about everything a software tester or a QA team is to do during the project. Every test plan features the object of testing, work schedules, criteria for the beginning and end of testing, strategy, risks, and a list of work performed.

### Checklist

A **checklist** is a document that holds a brief description of software functionality a specialist has to check. It looks like a list of features to test and statuses – the results you observe. Usually, we use checklists instead of test cases since they are faster to prepare. If you need a more specific description of the procedure, however, test cases are necessary. 

### Test Case

A **test case** is a document featuring a detailed description of the steps and actions a QA engineer needs to perform to test one piece of the functionality and the criteria for passing. Companies can use slightly different test case formats, but the information in each should be highly detailed and specific.

### Use Case

A **use case** is a simpler and less official document. It describes a scenario of interacting with software. Every use case is based on the assumption about what a person will do and where they will click, allowing software testers to check the intended user paths. When creating use cases, software testers address requirements and business objectives.

### Bug Report

A **bug report** provides full information about a bug (its description, severity and priority, etc.) and documents the steps and conditions for reproducing this bug. A detailed and effective bug report significantly increases the chances to fix this defect quickly. 

### Requirements

**Software requirements specification**, or simply requirements, is a full description of the software under development. To be more specific, requirements state the properties, qualities, and features of the software under development. Using this information, teams can avoid misunderstandings and controversies.

## How Does It All Work?

There are high-level and low-level documents. Every software tester can write checklists, test cases, and bug reports. It’s a part of their everyday responsibilities. Meanwhile, the preparation of a test plan requires extra skills and experience. In other words, it’s a task for a seasoned specialist or a QA Lead. 

The larger a project is, the more documentation it requires. If a team uses only checklists on a complex product, there is a risk of misunderstanding the priorities and running inefficient tests. The reason lies in the lack of detail. A checklist only names a feature, and every software tester can interpret the testing object and results in a different way. 

Test documentation is dynamic. It is effective only if a QA team updates it regularly. If we are talking documentation just so it exists, it doesn’t make much sense. Requirements can change. Priorities can shift. It all affects test coverage, required resources, etc. If a team doesn’t record the changes, they end up with inefficient documents and inconsistencies in the process. 

Just like that, test cases or use cases become outdated and irrelevant with time. When new functionality appears, QA engineers need to cover it with tests, too. Unless you record everything carefully, you risk ending up with unhelpful documents. 

## In Conclusion

Whether to create test documentation or not is a thing every company should decide for itself. QA specialists can recommend clients to do it, but clients are the ones to agree or disagree. As for the benefits of working documentation backing up the process, they are quite obvious. Test artifacts help to keep information in order and make it easy to understand what has been happening on the project from the very beginning even for newcomers. And while creating documentation takes some extra time, trying to figure out the blanks without it is always much more difficult and time-consuming.