Blog for Project Management Practices by Pravin

Communication is the key to success of any engagement, whether it is a Project Management, Program Management, relationship, presentation or even a still picture.

A technical view of what is communication before exploring more:

“Communication is an exchange of facts, ideas, opinion, emotions by two or more persons.” [Source Newman and Summer, Business Communication and Executive Effectiveness, Symbiosis Center for Distance Learning.]

Diagrammatic representation of Communication as taught in schools:

In nutshell, Communication is an art to transform any idea to Receiver and generating Response.

Some more lights on types of communications

-Written: emails, proposals, letters, memos and reports

-Verbal: Speech, lecture, presentation..etc

-Body Language: Facial expressions, Eye contacts, Gestures, Appearance

Why communication effective is important?

• To transform ideas in correctly to produce results
• To get objective or goal achieved as desired/planned
• To let vision transforms into reality
• To let receiver gets the right message with right emotions and feelings

Now, the key of the whole conversation! How a communication can be effective? Some of the tips from my experience:

• As you the source media is a key of entire communication process, so use the right medium and carrier to communicate e.g. If HR wants to communicate change in office timings, it cannot be through notice boards or verbal, it has to reach to each one definitely so send it through memos or emails.
• Communication should be precise having sufficient content to explain the subject, matter, action and post action need.
• While presenting, speak in a subtle tone, constant pace and take appropriate pauses. Prepare well in advance to avoid stupid flow mistakes.
• While in person formal communications make eye sustained eye contact, speak to the point; make positive gestures, my favorite keep Head High Shoulder Back!
• While presenting, use pictures, signs rather texts to convey idea. A diagram can explain the concept in seconds than reading multiple bullets.

One good thing always remember… “A man is identified by dress and address”.

Comments invited. More to come in next blog….Effective presentation skills.

Happy Communications!

Test Case is a scenario created to validate or test any program using sample data. The outcome of the test case determines whether the test is successful or failed. Successful execution of test case implies that business requirements met and program produces the desired results.

It is imperative to have test cases efficient, covering all the aspects of programs in order to validate. A test case may contain multiple steps.

Following are the characteristics of a test case:

1. Completeness – A test case should be thorough, having necessary steps covering the requirements and business cases, clear mapping with requirements i.e. use cases.
2. Clarity – Easy to understand and anyone can execute it.
3. Sufficient Data – It must contain sufficient data perform test. Without sufficient and meaningful data a test case becomes inefficient and there are chances to overlook important data validations.
4. Reference to dependent cases – Sometimes it is required to execute the other test cases to complete one cycle, the reference to such cases written clearly.

In general, test cases should be written in plan simple sentences, referring to Use Cases as and when required with complete traceability for requirements.

Quality Engineers write test cases based on different types of testing. Scope varies from Unit to System to Acceptance test cases. Irrespective of the type, each test case must have its basic characteristics. Happy writing test cases!

(Thank you Rashika, Test Engineer, Aithent Inc for sharing her experiences with test cases.)

Quality of Test Cases is directly proportional to Use Cases : Why to Review Use Case thoroughly

As a principle, every QA Engineer follows the use cases to design Test Cases irrespective of methodology they adopt.

Completeness and coverage within Test Cases fully depends on how the Use Cases are written and organized.

It always recommended having a QA review of Use Cases before releasing and freezing it for next usage, i.e. development or writing test cases. The focus should be bring sufficient business cases and identify gaps as early as possible to help teams in avoiding defects.

A lot written on use cases and what it should contain, primarily, it should have:

1. All business and attributes clearly defined
2. Clearly identified entities involved
3. Alternate cases clearly defined with complete cycle
4. Business analysts tend to link the Use Cases to avoid redundancy; it should not be done at the cost of clarity.

Once QA does a comprehensive review of use case, it certainly got value added and qualifies for writing test cases. A nicely written use case always makes job easy for QA Engineers and Developers.

More to cover about test cases in next blog.....