After the development team completes a project, the product owner always wants the product to be improved and have new features. However, another team may take over the project later to improve and maintain it. But what happens if this team doesn’t have the requirement document? In software development, it is ideal for the development team to read the requirement document from the previous phase of the project. This allows the testers to rely on the requirements to define test cases, perform them, and ensure the quality of the product.
In this blog, I will look at some challenges that testers may encounter when joining a project without any requirement document and talk about different ways to overcome those difficulties.
Testing challenges when project has no requirement documents
Lack of functions or flow guidance: When requirements or support documents are not available, testers may face difficulties in determining which functionalities to test, identifying missing business flows, and understanding specific expectations for each functionality. Even if an experienced person worked on the first phase of development, he may not remember all expectations and functionalities.
Cannot identify the scope for testing: The absence of requirements can make it difficult for the team to identify the scope of testing, causing testers to struggle to focus on the main functionalities, which can lead to potential issues being detected during the testing phase.
Resources and testing time: Without clear requirements, testers are unable to comprehend the scope and significance of various functions. As a result, they face challenges in resource planning, including determining the required team size and testing effort estimation. Furthermore, real-world constraints can impose limitations on both time and team resources, further complicating the testing process.
Lack of communication with stakeholders: When testers and stakeholders have different views, testers may assume the expectations of functionality, which can lead to a risk of not meeting the customer’s expectations.
Tips to overcome the challenges
According to my working experiences, here are some tips to overcome the challenges:
Work closely with stakeholders: try to dive the system with stakeholders by communicating them about the real expectation, what the goals, objectives, and functionalities.
Apply the exploratory testing: use this skill for exploring the system, detect the potential issues by identifying unexpected behavior. In my opinion, this is a good technique help us to gains the knowledge of system with a short time and find the issues effectively.
Transparent the risk of testing to stakeholders: identify risks which focus on main functionalities and potential issues that can affect to the timeline.
Document and share to stakeholders and team: besides exploring testing, we should document the functionalities and flows, and then share to stakeholders and team; it helps for reducing the time of the next person joining to the team.
Conclusion
Joining a project without requirement document, the testers can face with many challenges. But with the right testing approach, we can resolve the problem easily. By collaborating closely with stakeholders, exploratory testing, identifying potential risks and providing documentation support, testers can help the team to implement the project confidently and make high quality products.
