If you think your testing team has completed its test activities for the release, check if the test closure tasks have been completed too. These include -
Making sure that testing is indeed complete – verify the testing that has been performed against your test plan; check for items such as - whether areas planned to be tested have all been tested, coverage is as planned, tests executed and nothing is skipped (unless known & agreed upon), defects addressed (fixed, evaluated & defer, known issue that is documented), etc.
Conduct retrospective meetings, discuss lessons learnt from the testing performed and document findings to enable improvements in future test campaigns. Evaluate how our estimates fared with actual time taken and effort expended. Identify reasons for any deviation and possible steps to handle this in future test efforts. Look at defect trends and issues such as finding defects late in the cycle, areas for improvements of test processes, better tools usage and so on. Identify any unplanned risks that affected testing and take steps to plan for future campaigns.
Also, make sure to archive the test artifacts produced during the test campaign in a configuration management system. The system should be able to link the artifacts to the version of the system that was tested. Artifacts would include the test reports, test plan, test data, results of testing each build, log files, test cases and other work products.
"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it" - Edmund Burke
Making sure that testing is indeed complete – verify the testing that has been performed against your test plan; check for items such as - whether areas planned to be tested have all been tested, coverage is as planned, tests executed and nothing is skipped (unless known & agreed upon), defects addressed (fixed, evaluated & defer, known issue that is documented), etc.
Conduct retrospective meetings, discuss lessons learnt from the testing performed and document findings to enable improvements in future test campaigns. Evaluate how our estimates fared with actual time taken and effort expended. Identify reasons for any deviation and possible steps to handle this in future test efforts. Look at defect trends and issues such as finding defects late in the cycle, areas for improvements of test processes, better tools usage and so on. Identify any unplanned risks that affected testing and take steps to plan for future campaigns.
Also, make sure to archive the test artifacts produced during the test campaign in a configuration management system. The system should be able to link the artifacts to the version of the system that was tested. Artifacts would include the test reports, test plan, test data, results of testing each build, log files, test cases and other work products.
"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it" - Edmund Burke
