Meet our Consultants – Archana Mulka (Test Analyst)
Come behind the scenes of the Ten10 Consultancy Practice and meet Archana Mulka as she explains her role as a Test Analyst
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What does a Test Analyst do?
By conducting thorough testing activities, including functional, regression, API, UI, mobile app and browser compatibility testing, I help identify defects and issues early in the software development lifecycle. This leads to higher software quality, reduced rework costs, and improved user satisfaction.
I assess risks associated with software projects by collaborating with business teams to understand potential impact and with development teams to understand the likelihood of defects and implement risk mitigation strategies through effective testing practices such as risk-based testing, exploratory testing and identifying opportunities for test automation. By identifying and addressing potential issues proactively, I help minimise project delays, budget overruns, and negative impacts on business operations. When on an engagement with a client, I always remain transparent and honest and I try to be as productive as I can every day.
I help build stakeholder confidence in the project’s progress and readiness for go-live by providing comprehensive test reporting, metrics, and insights into software quality. I create tailored reports as per the project needs and requirements from stakeholders. Through UAT, I ensure that software systems meet user expectations and deliver a positive user experience. This contributes to increased user adoption, customer retention, and positive feedback for the client’s products or services.
I identify opportunities for test automation which in turn increases testing efficiency, reduces manual effort, and ultimately leads to cost savings for clients. If a client wants to move forward with the identified automation opportunity – I work with my colleagues in Ten10’s Automation Team, who can help with developing an effective test automation strategy that suits the client’s needs.
At Ten10, we are encouraged to do more than what is in the contract. So apart from the defined set of roles and responsibilities, I proactively identify areas that need improvement. I recommend and further help clients implement effective and robust continuous testing practices. For example, in one project, when the regression suite was not able to detect any defects or became obsolete, I offered to review and update the regression suite to reflect the current functionality and to cover the latest features. I worked with Ten10 colleagues in automation services to calculate the effort that could be saved if a set of regression tests are automated. I prioritised the test cases in collaboration with the business analysts and recommended that at least P1 regression tests need to be automated to increase the execution frequency along with the details of the effort that can be saved.
What are your top five tasks/deliverables/responsibilities that make a difference to successful programmes?
Requirement analysis
It is a fundamental phase of the testing lifecycle. Analysing requirements early in the testing lifecycle helps identify inconsistencies, ambiguities, and gaps that could lead to defects later. So I collaborate with business teams to understand and analyse project requirements, including functional specifications, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
As we often work from our client’s offices, face-to-face discussions help to reduce the turnaround time and resolve queries/issues a lot quicker. During this stage, I also perform risk analysis by collaborating with subject matter experts to identify risky areas such as potential failure points, edge cases, and complex functional journeys. I put more effort into testing the high-risk areas to maximise the value of testing within the time or budget limits. I ensure that the testing efforts always align with business objectives and user expectations.
Test design and execution
Effective test design and execution help in uncovering defects, verifying software requirements, and ensuring that critical functionality works as expected under different scenarios.
I apply the Tenology® framework and design test cases, test scenarios, and test data sets based on functional specifications and client requirements. I ensure that test cases cover all relevant scenarios, edge cases, and integration points to validate system functionality thoroughly. I prepare a requirement traceability matrix at this stage which maps the requirements with test cases and their associated risk score. This is extremely important to ensure maximum test coverage and to focus more on the right areas.
I collaborate with the developers, project managers and business SMEs throughout the test execution phase until the exit criteria are met. When it comes to the use of test management tools – during my time as a consultant in various clients’ projects – I have worked with multiple popular tools to create, manage and execute test cases. So I usually adapt to the client’s tooling quite easily when I start with a new client.
Defect management
Defect management is essential to avoid costly rework, customer support expenses, and potential damage to the brand’s reputation. As part of defect management, I track and manage defects throughout the testing lifecycle, from identification to resolution.
I work with project stakeholders to prioritise defects based on severity and impact, ensuring critical issues are addressed promptly. I conduct thorough defect retesting once they are fixed and perform regression testing wherever required. Defect management may be challenging when there are testing or development teams from multiple vendors, however, I am used to working in multi-vendor environments and collaborating with them to build quality throughout the lifecycle.
Test reporting
Ten10’s Tenology® provides a framework for creating clear, concise and informative reporting, these can be customised to meet the stakeholder’s requirements. I create timely status reports either daily or weekly to keep the stakeholders informed about the testing progress, test coverage, defects, and blockers.
I also create dashboards that show the real-time progress of testing activities and defects.
I produce a final test closure report when all the testing activities for a test phase are completed. These reports help the project stakeholders in making informed decisions about product readiness.
UAT support
UAT is a crucial phase in the software development lifecycle that bridges the gap between development and production. The main goal of UAT is to validate that the software is fit for purpose and to ensure that the software meets business requirements and reaches end-users expectations.
I assist in setting up the UAT environment, ensuring it mirrors the production environment as closely as possible. I provide training sessions or workshops to users or business teams participating in UAT, ensuring they understand testing processes, tools, and expectations.
I closely work with users throughout the UAT phase as we understand they might need constant support understanding the new features, new user interface, known issues, or if they require help with the correct build to test on, eg. ensuring the right version of the app is installed on UAT devices or that the right URL for UAT environment is being used.
I create comprehensive UAT closure reports for stakeholders, providing insights into system readiness for production deployment. This helps stakeholders make informed decisions about software quality before going live.