As a tester, testing a software with poor requirements can be a challenging task, but it’s not an impossible one. You can apply various strategies to ensure the best possible testing outcomes.

Here are some suggested approaches:

 

• Understand The Available Requirements:

Review the existing requirements, even if they are poorly defined or uncompleted. Try to extract as much information as possible and gain a basic understanding of what the software is supposed to do.

• Seek Additional Information:

Engage in discussions with stakeholders, such as business analysts, developers and team leader, to gather additional information and gain a clearer understanding of the software’s purpose and expected behavior.

• Define Test Objectives and Prioritize Testing:

Based on your analysis and discussions with stakeholders, define the test objectives. These test objectives should focus on the software’s functionality and user’s needs. Prioritize your testing efforts on critical and high-risk areas.

• Perform Exploratory Testing:

With limited requirements, exploratory testing becomes especially valuable. Use your domain knowledge, testing experience to explore the software. Try with different inputs and observe its behavior. Document any issues, unexpected behavior or inconsistencies you encounter.

• Focus on User Perspective:

In the absence of clear requirements, put yourself in the user’s position and consider their view. Test workflows of software to ensure it meets user’s needs and provides a satisfactory experience.

• Document Defects and Issues:

Document any defects, inconsistencies or deviations from expected behavior that you encounter during testing. Provide detailed descriptions, steps to reproduce and any supporting evidence to help stakeholders understand these issues.

• Provide Feedback and Suggestions:

Regularly provide constructive feedback and suggestions to improve the requirements. Share your insights, observations and testing result with stakeholders, emphasizing the need for clearer and more complete requirements.

• Document Assumptions and Risks:

Should make a list of the assumptions you and your team have made based on the limited requirements. Identify potential risks and uncertainties that may arise due to the poor requirements. Document and share them with stakeholders to ensure consistency and manage expectations.

 

Testing software with poor requirements requires a proactive and collaborative approach. Your role as a tester is not only to find the issues but also to contribute to the overall quality of the software. By collaborating, applying testing techniques and leveraging your experience, you can help mitigate the impact of poor requirement on the testing process and improve the software’s quality. And in testing, dealing with poor or undefined requirements is the task we must accept as a part of tester’s life.

 

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