The Importance of Documentation Testing


Software users consider all these individual non-software components parts of the overall software product. They don't care whether the pieces were created by a programmer, a writer, or a graphic artist. What they care about is the quality of the entire package.

NOTE

If the installation instructions are wrong or if an incorrect error message leads them astray, users will view those as bugs with the softwareones that should have been found by a software tester.


Good software documentation contributes to the product's overall quality in three ways:

  • It improves usability. Remember from Chapter 11, "Usability Testing," all the issues related to a product's usability? Much of that usability is related to the software documentation.

  • It improves reliability. Reliability is how stable and consistent the software is. Does it do what the user expects and when he expects it? If the user reads the documentation, uses the software, and gets unexpected results, that's poor reliability. As you'll see in the rest of this chapter, testing the software and the documentation against each other is a good way to find bugs in both of them.

  • It lowers support costs. In Chapter 2 you learned that problems found by a customer can cost 10 to 100 times as much as if they were found and fixed early in the product's development. The reason is that users who are confused or run into unexpected problems will call the company for help, which is expensive. Good documentation can prevent these calls by adequately explaining and leading users through difficult areas.

NOTE

As a software tester, you should treat the software's documentation with the same level of attention and give it the same level of effort that you do the code. They are one in the same to the user. If you're not asked to test the documentation, be sure to raise this as an issue and work to have it included in your overall testing plan.




    Software Testing
    Lessons Learned in Software Testing
    ISBN: 0471081124
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 233

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