What kind of documentation do I need for testing new site against old?

Question

I'm a Product Manager, not ideally tasked with but enjoying directly managing a new SQA team.

AdHoc testing has covered a lot of quick ground, but I think it's now time to implement better exploratory, functional and usability testing.

To do so, I feel the need to have functional specifications for each module of our website. We are launching a new version of ExploreTalent.com and so I'm aiming to have an idle SQA Engineer map all functionality per module for the old site to use in testing for the new site. The new site has not introduced more features, per se, but URL structure and navigation has been altered, meaning there are differences.

If anyone has been through a similar experience or could point me towards some suitable templates / guides and offer their advice, I'd appreciate it.

Answer 1

Comparing old versus new is often quite a testing challenge, particularly without deep documentation. The basic, obvious parts will likely be fine. But the edge cases, the hidden dependencies, the more subtle parts, and the fixes and patches applied to the old system over the years, all can easily get lost in the transition.

A full Functional Spec would go a long way here. But having an idle QAer whip one up would only work well if that person has deep domain knowledge of the existing system.

Does the current system have any documentation? Any automated regression tests? All input like these can help.

Do you have domain experts you can call on to review documentation, contribute additions, and help with the testing? That would be useful, too.

Plan a significant period of parallel testing if you can, where all input to the old system gets put into the new system. And plan a significant Beta Testing period too, if you can.

Good luck with your challenge.