How to Write QA Documentation? A Complete Guide

Creating detailed, accurate, and high-quality QA documentation is very important as it helps streamline your testing processes and guarantees the quality of your software. This kind of document also makes it easier to share information among team members, which will ultimately save time.

The article takes you through the basics of writing a good QA documentation example, including how to make a defect report or a test progress report.

QA documentation is made up of a detailed description that indicates test procedures used, how various testing methods and methodologies are applied, your approach to testing and business objectives, software requirements specifications, and what effects have been yielded by quality assurance tests. It also allows others to know about how good or bad the software product works.

Quality Assurance (QA) documentation is essential because it ensures that there is consistency in carrying out testing practices, identifies potential faults, and provides a documented history of the testing activity.

This documentation helps improve communication with team members and stakeholders while at the same time ensuring that all parties involved are aware of the quality standards of the software under development as well as its stage of testing.

Here are some of the software QA documentation that you might need:

Defects report

To track and fix software defects, a defect report is crucial. It provides detailed information about unwanted problems in the software. The following are some features of a standard defect report.

Let’s go through every section of the defect report:

• Identifier: A unique number for identifying a particular defect report.
• Summary: A short response to “What happened?”, “Where?” and “Under what conditions?”.
• Description: More details about bugs including actual and expected results and link to software requirements.
• Steps to Reproduce (STR): Detailed instructions on how to replicate the problem.
• Reproducibility: Tells whether or not the bug appears every time that STR is done.
• Severity: It tells you how much harm the bug can do to your project.
• Priority: Indicates the level of urgency needed to solve this bug.
• Symptom: Name given to a group of similar defect reports.
• Workarounds: Possible solutions or temporary fixes.
• Comments: Any additional useful information for developers.
• Attachments: Extra files added to the report such as screenshots.

The life-cycle of a defect report

Submitting a defect report is just the beginning point since this document has its lifecycle with a certain sequence of steps aimed at thorough addressing and resolution of the issue:

Submission

The very first stage of the life cycle is creating and submitting a defect report. This includes providing necessary details relating to the subject matter, such as summary, description, steps of reproduction, severity level, and priority. 

In order for other members of the team to have a clear understanding of this error, accurate and comprehensive defect reports are important during this phase.

Review

Once the defect report has been submitted, it undergoes review by the development team. Team members check whether the reported error is valid or not. They also establish whether the problem is reproducible or not in terms of project requirements. In such a case, the report can be accepted and assigned to the developer or declined. 

The defect report refusal usually happens when a problem cannot be repeated, it is a known feature rather than a bug, or managers perceive its priority as low.

Assignment

If the defect report is accepted, it is then assigned to a developer. The assignment depends on things like the developer’s skills and knowledge, workload, and also important characteristics like priority and severity of the error.

During this phase, effective communication ensures that developers are aware of details about the defect and how immediate fixing should be done.

Fixing

Afterward, bug fixing begins. This includes establishing what caused the defect by performing root cause analysis in order to understand how to fix it and making changes so that all test cases pass successfully. 

Modifying related code, documentation, and test cases along with clarifying assumptions made may also be done by a developer during this stage.

Verification

On completion of bug-fixing activities by developers, the testing team takes back control of the defect log. They would retest software using STRs outlined in bug summary documents. This way, they ensure that no issues pertain after resolving and that the fix did not introduce any new defects. This stage is critical for maintaining the integrity of the software.

Reopen

If the QA team finds a defect that is not repaired or if there are any other issues after fixing, the defect report will be reopened. The reopened report offers additional notes and data obtained during the re-testing phase to enable a developer to understand why a fix did not work successfully. This stage may require multiple iterations of fixing and retesting until the problem is completely solved.

Closure

Closing the defect report is the last step. This happens when the QA team confirms that the bug was fixed, and no other issues arose. In conclusion, in a defect report, closure is documented and the issue is marked resolved in a project tracking system. 

You can refer to a closed defect report for future reference as it provides information about the problem at hand, its resolution, and how it was handled and the selected testing strategy.

Typical errors when creating a defect report

Common errors include:

• Inadequate summaries that do not give a clear understanding of an issue.
• Describing things in a redundant way or unclear manner may confuse someone reading them.
• Missing expected results and actual results — without these two it’s impossible to understand how severe the bug is.
• Unclear or missing screenshots — they help identify problem areas faster.
• Reporting non-existent defects — this wastes everybody’s time including yours!
• Delaying reporting — sometimes people wait until the last moment.
• Grammar errors lead to misinterpretation.
• Misinterpreting features as bugs results in unnecessary fixes.
• Lack of understanding of technical requirements leading to inaccurate reports.
• Incomplete steps reproduce making it hard to replicate the issue.

Test plans

Now you know about defect reports, test cases, and test suites, let’s move on to a wider area of quality assurance documentation – test planning.

After reading all the above statements regarding defect identification and their reporting methods, you have to be aware of how important it is to plan testing activities properly and its key differences.

The test plan will serve like the main guideline during the whole process of testing software on any level. It should include everything, starting from your ‘to-do’ list, ending up with resources needed for performing tests and business requirements, the strategy chosen for a particular case/situation along with the schedule, and many more.

Your average test plan should answer thirteen questions:

1. What is the reason behind the software? Understand what drives its existence and what it wants to achieve.
2. Which features do you need to test? Identify essential functionalities without trying to test everything at once.
3. What is testing going to look like? Describe methodologies, approaches, technologies, a QA documentation template, and tools that will be used during testing.
4. What are your customer’s or target audience acceptance criteria? Set standards or requirements that must be satisfied for software to be acceptable.
5. When do you start/finish testing? Establish clear timelines for beginning and ending all activities related to testing.
6. What should make you stop or continue tests? Determine when we should stop/continue with tests basing this decision not only on some minor things.
7. What development resources do you need? Specify operating systems and the number of copies/licenses needed for development and testing purposes.
8. What hardware and experts are required? Point out necessary hardware as well as testers who should be involved in the process.
9. How much time/money does your software project have for testing? Evaluate available budgets together with time constraints so that adequate amounts can be allocated towards thorough testing.
10. Is there a test schedule? Create a detailed schedule considering whether it is realistic to concentrate all efforts within a short period of time.
11. Are roles and responsibilities clearly defined? Define roles and responsibilities clearly so that no one gets confused especially when key people like a lead tester might not be around.
12. Are there any risks associated with testing? In your QA strategy document, you should identify potential risks inherent in carrying out this activity and then weigh whether it would be better not to do any tests at all or test more extensively instead.
13. What metrics are being used for a QA document? Decide on metrics used in evaluating the success of testing and ensure comprehensive quality assurance documentation is available.

Use this QA document template to get started on your test plan.

Test progress report

A test progress report is similar to a test plan but has current progress data. It aids in keeping the software development projects on track by summarizing key metrics and pointing out areas that need attention. 

This formal document should contain:

• Summary of testing activities: A synopsis of what has been tested.
• Test results: Documentation process of the results of tests carried out.
• Defects found: A technical documentation of all the defects experienced during testing.
• Progress against schedule: How well has testing been done compared to the planned schedule.
• Resource utilization: Findings about resource management.
• Risks and issues: Any risks or issues that have been identified.
• Next steps: Development process activities planned for the next stage of testing.

Typically, the QA team is tasked with creating and maintaining QA process documents. However, comprehensive documentation requires input from developers, project managers, and other stakeholders. 

The QA team makes sure that the document captures everything essential while collaboration with others helps capture all necessary details.

For software development to remain of high quality, there must be effective QA testing documentation. Clearness and brevity are some of the qualities a good QA doc should possess if it is to be useful for all its readers. When test processes are well documented it leads to more streamlined processes in testing as well as better communication, thus improving the overall software quality.