Compatibility Test Report

I was asked to-do compatibility testing for an upcoming large consumer website. Compatibility testing is a part of software non-functional testing. This testing is conducted on the application to evaluate the application’s compatibility against browsers in respect to different computing environment.

I'm extremely delighted to do compatibility testing for the 8th time, in close to 5 years of my experience in this testing craft. However, when about to do compatibility testing for a new large customer website I was thinking how good am I going to report this time, when compared to my previous test experiences?. Usually I do create a check-list of tests that I perform during my test activity, basically it’s kind of recording my tests in an Microsoft office excel during test execution and fail the respective tests across browser/OS if bugs are discovered or pass the tests if I'm happy that the current .html file works fine with the updated design specification. I know I'm following a conventional method of reporting to which the management is already happy with. But I now wanted to try something new, which I haven't tried so far. Thereby I can learn new things from the planned test activity. That's when I received a tweet from Lisa Crispin pointing to Christin's blog on Going to the extreme - xBTM. I started to read Christin's blog, I liked the way she used mind map for creating test reports. Her reports impressed me a lot and it amplified my right brain thinking to create my own Compatibility Test Report. Isn't that sounding interesting?

Compatibility Test report using Mind map:
The mind map can be used to easily understand in which all operating systems and browsers the html pages works well with the design specification we referred to match with and in which all browser/OS it doesn't work as expected. This will be an on-going mind map which we can update in consecutive test-iteration as well. The static html pages marked with ‘X’ symbol denotes it has bugs, those marked with 'tick' symbol has passed through QA. And No Entry ‘(-)’ symbol denotes it has not assigned for testing. Smiley denotes we, the development team have developed perfectly matching the design specification. Look what I have created from below snapshot. It may serve you're purpose as well if you would like to create one for your organization! :)

Compatibility Test Report_encompassing first-Iteration results

I got great appreciations for this compatibility test report initiative. If it also serves your purpose, then please do let me know. Also, I would love to hear your hurdles while creating this test report. So together we can learn better!

Best Regards,
Shiva Mathivanan

PS: The .html files mentioned are not real file names. I had purposefully hidden the project name and relevant html pages of the website I test for authentication issues.