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Document Formats For Software Release Manifests?
Lt. Wuff asks: "I work in the QA/testing realm. My second biggest headache (QA being treated like the unwanted bastard child of software development being the biggest) is poor documentation of a given deliverable. If I don't know what's coming, I really can't plan the testing. Along the same lines, there really needs to be a way to get a quick glance at a release and know where it's at and what it's doing. Release notes tend to chase the development and are only somewhat useful for test planning. I'm not sure home many people here use something like a release contents document in their development/testing cycle, but I'm a huge fan of using them to control scope, manage expectations and allow me to plan testing. It's a quick glance at the release that anyone can understand. I've got a pretty bland format that assumes that the people are using some issue tracking software and I'm looking for others (i.e. developers) who use something like this to share ideas with."
...to plan testing then you're always going to be behind. Test plans need to be set up in parallel with software development so the testers can become familiar with the software and create any tools or setups they will need for testing.
One thing that I've seen good organizations do is make the developers responsible for the completeness of the test plan. They have to sign off on it and if something is missed they take as much blame for it as the QA people do. At my current job, we're months away from code complete and yet most of the test plans are in place.
At my current workplace we are required to have our release notes checked into source control before we get a new release into the build (of course, this requires cooperation from the build guy.) If we don't provide proper release notes--defined by build and QA, BTW--QA won't even see it to test it.
Sure some of the developers are going to grumble about it, but those with some experience know that you have to have the procedures in place if you want to have working software instead of a big ball of mud. The 10 minutes I spend updating our release notes prevents the hour of questions I'd get from build and QA about which bugs I fixed in this release. Spending an hour with the QA guys working on the test plan can save me from being the guy who keeping our product from shipping because of a bug that's not found until the day before we ship.
Sorry, but you must now cease and decist. DoubleClick already holds the patents for both bland formats and tracking software.
A simple Google search yeiled some pretty good results, perhaps some /. readers have used some of that software. It seems like there is an abundance of it out there. What kind of QA do you do exactly, and what kind of software is it? Perhaps there is a package specificly aimed at one area, such as game design or office software.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.