We are all at wit’s end when we are into testing last minute features that are thrust upon on us. As a team, we are annoyed, frustrated, and don’t know what to do next as these new features demand exhaustive quality analysis and testing but we don’t have time. So what do we do?
Push Back
This sounds counter-intuitive, but pushing back implementing the new features at the last minute is the best you can do to your product considering the time pressure that you are in. In the world CI/CD, there’s no ‘deadline’ per se because you can keep pushing new changes as you go, but there are realistic customer expectations of when they want that feature. In this scenario, the best way to handle last minute changes or implementation is to talk to the end-users or the customers and make them realize the risk that they are putting the product in if the changes were implemented, provided you have done the analysis and convinced that it is not for the good for anyone.
Prioritize
If pushing back is not an option, the next alternative is to prioritize the features that need to be implemented. Again, this needs interactions with the customers to figure what is important for them. Practical issues of what would be possible to implement also play a role on what features or changes to prioritize. Team’s talent and skills on implementing the changes is also another major factor. So rather than being a straight-forward list of priorities based on customer feedback, it is a matrix of things that need be considered when prioritization is done.
Roll Up Your Sleeves
Now that you have pushed back and prioritized, it’s time to get to work. Complex software implementations need a thorough review of the implications of the changes, how the features would interact, and what existing features might break. Doing the new design requires close interaction with the product management, customers, developers, testers, and the field engineers. If your product has multiple versions to handle on different trains, it is more complicated and requires further careful analysis. A matrix of features to be tested and check marked based on the interaction of all the features is a good starting point for the analysis for each supported version. Dependency analysis on operating systems, drivers, and third-party software also need to be included in this analysis.
Conclusion
Quality analysis and testing last minute features is not fun. It needs thorough analysis and careful planning. The best thing would be to not to do last minute features, but one had to, then prioritizing the features and doing a detailed study on interaction of various existing features and software components is the way to go. Hope this article provides you the clarity on how to handle testing last minute features. If your organisation requires hand-holding on quality and testing aspects of your products, please feel free to get in touch with me. Glad to help!