Huong Tran is the Quality Assurance Coordinator for LandPKS. She is based in Las Cruces, NM, and has been working on the project since Jan 2016. Huong’s primary roles with the project include creating test plans and test scenarios, working with software developers to ensure quality standards, and performing manual tests for various products of LandPKS. She enjoys catching LandPKS bugs before users do and glad that she can contribute to providing confidence towards software quality.

Scenario testing is done to make sure that the end to end functioning of the LandPKS app and all the process flows are working well. In scenario testing, the tester puts herself in the end user’s shoes and figures out the real-world scenarios or use cases that can be performed on the app by the end-user. Scenario testing helps testers to explore how the app will work in the hands of an end-user. This is very important for catching bugs in the LandPKS app and designing the app with users’ needs in mind.

Even though the main goal of testing is to be able to detect and catch many of the bugs, the automated tools cannot test for visual considerations like gestures, image color, or font size. However, the manual testing that Huong does can judge these types of app features. Manual testing can also test the User Experience and User Interface. Any bugs in data connection and/or slope measurement, which are two critical functionalities of the LandPKS app, can also be caught with manual testing

In light of the fact that access to an Internet connection in Africa is still limited, Huong has prioritized her testing efforts and focused on the reliability of the apps in an unstable data connection environment. She has tried to replicate the scenarios that a common end-user might face when s/he is in the field collecting data and using the app. Her tests are done to ensure that the GPS is still working well, the app is behaving as expected, and that entered data is saved when there is no network or data connection.