Working From Home Benefits: Is This The New Normal?

We understand how precious time planning and management are during the quarantine days when we have to work from home due to the pandemic. There are several Working from home benefits for prolonged periods of time that are different from working in your workspace.

While working from home, we discovered that due to the availability of more time, we ran tests more frequently, which made us tired very fast. Hence, we wanted to make sure we made and implemented some principles that helped us in working from home online better and more efficiently. In this blog we will discuss working from home opportunities, working from home tips, working from home challenges and many more.

Top 7 Working from Home Benefits

Here are some benefits of working from home. So let’s get started

1. Impact Analysis

Before starting the test, the scope of the work must be thoroughly analyzed by the tester. This work to affect the areas should be listed in advance. While doing this, we can get support from the software developer and product manager. (For example, if we are testing an innovation on the listing page, we need to analyze whether it will affect the listing page in responsiveness.)

The cases in the impact analysis should be adhered to. We should not test irrelevant areas and keep in mind that the purpose of the test is to determine the impact analysis. If there are cases that cannot be tested, they should be listed and reported. Especially the risks arising from the untested areas.

We should prepare the necessary software-hardware from the front in line with the impact analysis. For example, if they affect mobile applications within the scope of the tested work, we should prepare devices. If the facilities in the home and office environment are not the same, if there is an unfavorable situation, these problems should be communicated to the managers in detail.

2. Shred Test

If the scope of the tested work for time planning and management is large, it can be tested by breaking it down. Innovation to be made on the web page, we cannot observe applications and responsiveness at the same time. These areas should be divided and tested. We should use impact analysis in the division process because the impact analysis determines the priority order. We should start testing from the parts divided in order of priority. We can also split small jobs as well. For example, if we will test the web home page, we can control by shredding things like header, footer, logo, homepage buttons, etc.

3. Automatic Tests Running Ahead

We should start service, and selenium tests before starting the test or simultaneously with the manual test. In this way, the errors that automatic tests will find are intervened quickly.

4. Easy Reporting

There may be problems in reporting errors, especially during the working period from home. Test experts working side by side and software specialists can easily communicate and examine errors in the test; however, it will be more difficult to remotely transmit and analyze errors. Therefore, the technique should be “simple”. We should report any errors in a reasonable language. 

If possible, we should add screenshots or even short videos describing the error. There is one more thing I would like to add here: “Polite and patience.” There may be misunderstandings in reporting. All teams working together should be more polite and patient than ever before, especially during working from home.

5. Frequent Communication

We should hold meetings with teammates and other teams working together every day to keep track of the works and carry out them easily. It should create a tighter communication channel to make everyone aware of each other. Everything will get harder when the communication network breaks during the stay at home. For this reason, we should follow daily meetings, the mails more closely, and we should communicate problems from the applications that are contacted immediately in order to take quick action whenever there is a problem.

6. Tester’s Paranoia

All the time used to drive traffic to go to work in the morning, spend time in the car park while waiting for the car, wait for the bus and even eat is now spent working at home. As there is more time in the home environment, we look at things in more detail. It is, of course, a good thing to do such a careful and detailed test; but it turns out to be a paranoid state.

7. Other

We have collected the known items in the other title:

1. Dress as you go to work.
2. Have a working space.
3. Take a break/move.
4. Have regular meal times.
5. Don’t forget to drink water.
6. Take notes if it distracts you.

If you are working too hard and never letting go (like me), set yourself the start and end times. Let these watches be exact, try to adapt. These are the substances that will save us time and regulate us while working in the home environment. In fact, we need to plan and organize in every area of ​​our lives, in our house, in our car, in our drawer, not just while testing. Because we are wasting time even when looking for an item.

Hence, these are the working from home benefits and principles that we implemented in our work from home schedule that helped us perform tests more effectively. If you have any other questions, please feel free to address them in the comments section below.