QA Release Notes: Just Write What Matters to Your Target Audience

This year our QA manager talked to every QA member: One day before Production Release, we need to send out QA Release Notes to Support Team, Project Stakeholders and some Managers. I like this procedure because testers in different project may not know what others are doing in another project. From release notes, they can learn something new.

In the beginning, I thought I needed to write something about system requirement, bug fixes, bug description and the workaround in the release notes.  Finally I find it really depends on the team culture. Most importantly, if you know who your target audience is, just write what matters to them.

Release notes can be for either internal or external use.  For external users, system requirements, bug fixes, bug descriptions and the workaround need to be included.

System Requirement

What bugs we fixed?

What’s the workaround for bug fixes?

For internal users such as our support team, project stakeholders, managers and team members, they don’t care about them. From our perspective, they only care about

Project Name

Release Sprint

Release Date

New features

Total defects by area path (Use Pivot Chart)

Total defects by priority (Use Pivot Chart)

Total Test cases pass and fail (Use Pivot Chart)

Caveats

Going forward

If you know who your target audience is, you will know that there is no standard template of release notes. You can create it by yourself at any time and just write what matters to them.