Documentation: Low Tech Testing Dashboard

When starting on a new project, it’s very common for me to be the first and / or only tester.  I find myself frequently wanting to document the same things, rewriting them from scratch.  To help with this, I’ve decided to include some of this documentation on my own blog, so I no longer have to start from scratch.  I’ll probably edit and improve them over time.  You can view all posts in the documentation series.

A low tech testing dashboard is a quick way to document and view the testing status of an SUT. The content of this dashboard has been adapted from the original concept.

• Area: Workflow, object, etc.

• Sub-Area: Feature, functionality, etc.

• Effort / Status: How much testing is remaining

  • None: We don’t plan to test this, but we could

  • Low – Medium – High

  • Paused: Testing is temporarily paused

  • Blocked: We can’t test this right now

  • Ready: This is in a shippable condition

• Coverage: How much we know about the quality of this area

  • 0 – We know nothing about this

  • 1 – We’ve covered the basics

  • 2 – We know enough to be confident in our assessment

  • 3 – We have extensive knowledge

• Stability: How much we can rely on the last assessment

  • Stable: The quality is consistent over time

  • Unknown: Further observation is required

  • Unstable: The quality is inconsistent over time

• Assessment: Assessment of quality; outlook

  • ☀️ Looks great

  • 🌤️ Looks good, but could still be issues

  • ☁️ Some small or acceptable issues

  • 🌧️ Some blocking issues

  • 🌪️ Several blocking issues

• Comments: Points of note

Find this useful?  I’m happy for you to use it as a basis for your documentation too.  Please just add appropriate attribution (e.g., linking to this post).