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.

Date format localization causes the Issue on ArcGIS Rest API

Our project is using Silverlight 5 and ArcGIS Rest API. We are very happy that the product is live in 7 countries now.

Recently our users in some EMEA countries reported the issue saying that they can’t use some important features in their local machines.  This makes me think that it is the localization issue.  Developers always use English Operating system and IE (en-US) to develop the important features. Of course, there is no issue in their local machines. Testers can’t find those localization issues, either. We need to narrow down the issue and see if we can still repro them. 

It makes me think of some scenarios:

IE French (fr-FR): causes the issue when testing

IE Germany (de-DE):  no issue when testing

Change system Locale to French or Germany and use IE (en-US): No issue when testing.

Change date format to French and use IE (en-US): causes the issue when testing.

Change date format to German and use IE (en-US):  causes the issue when testing.

Change date format to Chinese (PRC) and use IE (en-US): causes the issue when testing in another feature.

Since our product is live in 7 countries, we need to narrow down the issue and finally we find date format in localization causes the issue all the time for some important features. It is easy for our developers to fix the bugs quickly.

We also notice that ArcGIS Rest API can’t handle localization of date format in some EMEA countries very well. In this case, it is out of our control. We need to report the bugs to ESRI.

The quick workaround is to ask users to change the date format to English (United States), it will work.

CanoScan error: Make sure that there is enough space on the target disk

I have used my scanner, CanoScan LiDE 70, to scan documents without any problem since 2006. Today when I used it, I got the following error message :

Unable to scan: Make sure that there is enough space on the target disk.

This error message was not helpful because my target disk still had so much space. When I changed the default setting to another disk, it still showed the error. When I rebooted my PC, I still got this error too.

When I was surfing some forums, I could not get the correct answer. The best way for me in my mind was to uninstall CanoScan LiDE 70 driver and install it again to see what’s going on.

After the uninstall and install CanoScan LiDE 70 driver, there is no error message. It is working for me.

If you get this error message next time, just uninstall it and install it again. It might work for you.

3 failed login attempts block your account—a good idea?

If you go to some famous online websites, you need to login to your account using your username and password. But if you use the wrong password to login 3 times, your account will be blocked. You need to call the customer service representative and get the new password to login again. Is it a good idea to set the policy of 3 failed login attempts?

Just imagine this situation. If a hacker is very familiar with using the tool to try different username and password during 2 hours in ABC Company, do you think it is easy for him to block other people’s accounts? Do you think the account owners will blame ABC Company?

People holding a CA checking account can’t apply a WA savings account in Washington Mutual

This October, I was surfing the website of Washington Mutual and suddenly I found if you have the existing WaMu’s checking account, you can link it to a new savings account with the rewarding interest rate 4.75% APR and without minimal balance. This rewarding deal attracted me to apply for a new savings account.

At that time, I had one thing in my mind: I opened my checking account some years ago in California; my current billing address is in California, but I live in Seattle now. Can I open a new savings account and let WaMu send my ATM card to my apartment in Seattle ? Therefore, I wanted to give it a try.

During the process of applying a new savings account, I was informed that I couldn’t apply because I have more than one residency. I called the customer service center and one of the representatives told me that I couldn’t use California’s checking account to apply for a Washington state’s savings account because they are in the different state. She told me that I needed to change CA address to WA address first and then I could apply.

According to WaMu’s MIS system, I can guess some points as follows:

1. Every state has their own database for customers.

2. People can withdraw money in 50 states, but they can’t apply for another state’s checking account or savings account online unless they change their addresses first.

3. WaMu’s employees in Washington State can’t have the permission of requesting the new debit card which was open in California.

America is the “United” States of America. I don’t know why Americans can’t apply multiple accounts in the same bank , but from different state. Is it related to the state law or does it only happen in WaMu?

Do you think it is an interesting issue?

A BVT is an important concept in modern QA field

A build verification test (BVT) is a very popular and an important concept in modern QA field. Many test cases are based on BVTs. Therefore, they can let you verify if all of the unit test cases can be run in your latest build. If your BVTs fail, it means your build is not reliable. You need to create another build as soon as possible.

For example, if you have Adobe Indesign CS3 now and you want to test the install and uninstall, what are your BVTs? “Installing all components, verifying all components, uninstalling all components, and verifying all uninstalled components,” are the basic BVTs. If it fails, it means your latest build has some problems.

Recently when I installed and uninstalled Adobe InDesign CS3, I had one thing on my mind: Does their test team have BVTs and UI tests? If yes, how come the UI is not so user-friendly for me? I should say their UI team didn't do it well . When I clicked Add or Remove Programs and wanted to uninstall Adobe Indesign, it showed me that I needed to insert a CD again. Is it by design? If it is by design, I want to ask: why do they want to design like this?

In the future when you get a chance, you can ask your test team to see if they know BVTs or not. If not, tell them to use it.

Adobe Indesign User-Expereince:
Comments on installation of Adobe Indesign and Illustrator

Finding a bug about the program of balance transfer in Citibank

Last year Citibank offered customers 0% APR on balance transfer with no transaction fee for one year. I was very glad to apply for it last April, enjoyed one-year benefit, and needed to pay off the balance transfer this April without any financial charges.

However, in this early Feb, its website still offered me the same deal for one year. I had one thing in my mind: If I paid off last year’s balance transfer first and started a new balance transfer later, what would it happen next? Therefore, I wanted to give it a try.

I paid off last year’s balance transfer this Feb and started a new balance transfer in the late Feb. I really received the confirmation letter of one-year balance transfer from Citibank. Before April 30, nothing happened. In May, Citibank charged me financial charge. I found this was really a big bug for this program. If customers are not happy, Citibank may cause some troubles.

I called one of customer service representatives and explained it was the time gap between old balance transfer and new balance transfer. I mentioned that your program only calculated the due date. Finally they recognized it was the problem and removed the financial charges for me.

Citibank can ask me to work as a test developer for them.

Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)

Today, I tried to install QuickBooks, but unfortunately it failed. I thought it might be the CD problem. Finally I found if I wanted to install it, only what I could do was to copy 2 folders to my local drive and clicked setup.exe. The installation setup should be working.
Unfortunately, there was one file that I couldn’t copy to my local drive. The error message is as follows:

Data error (cyclic redundancy check)

I had 2 things in my mind at that time. One was CD problem and the other one was CD-ROM problem. Therefore, I asked Christine to use her laptop to copy that file from CD to her local drive. It worked.

Therefore, I copied the file from her laptop, pasted to mine and the installation setup was working in my laptop.

Next time if you suffer from this problem, just check if there is something wrong with your CD and CD-ROM. You will get the answer!