Message to developers: consider the value of professional software testing help
Some software developers have in-house software testing staff, while smaller (often shareware) outfits test their apps themselves, and consider outside testing help a luxury; some, therefore, rely largely on volunteer beta testers. If you rely on beta testers for your testing, consider how much value they're adding to your release, and if they meet these qualifications:
- Member of Apple Developer Connection
- Have access to pre-release developer builds
- Have a variety of hardware for compatibility testing
- Help troubleshoot and localize specific issues, define the scope of a problem (OS version(s), hardware, etc.)
- Able to test compatibility issues, e.g. different behaviours with various CarbonLib versions
- Report bugs in a timely fashion
- For repeatable bugs, provide step-by-step test cases
- Use a bug database to enter new bugs, update info, spot possible links between bugs
- When likely to be of value, provide screen shots with bug reports to illustrate the bug
- On Classic, test with MacsBug installed (including EBBE on, and sometimes with heap scrambled)
- Submit MacsBug and system crash logs, as well as console log output, with bug reports
- When necessary, submit Apple System Profiler logs
- For AppleScript recordable app, submit test scripts for bug regression
- As required, discover in which release a bug was introduced
- Try different system fonts
- Familiar with Aqua Human Interface Guidelines (300+ pages), reference in bug reports
- Have experience with UNIX scripts (create test files and/or directory hierarchies, integrate with AppleScripts)
- Can be trusted to maintain the confidentiality of your internal releases, passwords and other information
- Provide documentation testing and proofreading help
- Champion for the user experience
- Understand the difference between a program and a product
- Provide the commitment and testing attention your app deserves
- Provide a fresh, new and holistic perspective on your project: application, installer, Web site, help files, tutorial, other documentation
- Depending on schedules and time zone differences, may be able to start testing builds produced at the end of your work day, so you can have bug feedback at the beginning of your next work day
If you're convinced that you would benefit from professional software and documentation testing help, or even if you're still thinking about it, we invite you to get in touch with us at the address below.
Modified 7 January 2003, 14:02 MST
This Web page maintained by:Doug Grinbergs (doug@mactester.com)