Identify your needs

- [Instructor] You have a version of your app. Looking forward, you know you want to give it the most thorough and comprehensive test possible. However, you have restraints. Things like budget, time, resources, and other concerns are likely on your mind. You're probably thinking, "How am I going to test this thing?" Throughout the testing process, there are four key needs that you should be thinking about: your customer, your time, your dependencies, and the app itself. Where you actually start isn't with the hardware, or even the software you are testing. You start with your customer. You have a target demographic who you expect to purchase your app, and you define your resources based on this user. Knowing who this user is will actually answer a lot of questions about your needs. What kind of device do they use? What kind of apps do they download? Are they likely to pay for the app? Are they high-tech, sophisticated users? Or are they novices who don't understand technology? Will they use the app every day, once a week, or just for very specific tasks? Understanding the user helps you set a path for your testing as well as your hardware and software needs. The next resource you need to understand is your time. How long do you have to test your app? Do you have weeks, days, months? Lay down a specific schedule working backward from a target release date. How much time you will need will depend on the complexity of your app and its stability. If you are testing an updated app or something very simple, you may only need a few weeks to execute your test. However, if you are starting with something from scratch, you will want to give yourself a lot of time to complete your testing. Sure, it may not take as long as you plan, but nobody will complain if you get everything done early. The third element you need to understand are your dependencies. These are the people, teams, resources, or even hardware and software you need to execute your test that are outside of your control. If you have to depend on specific people or products to deliver, but you have little say in how they work, that is a big risk to successful testing. Developers, product managers, tools, and services are all dependencies. These things can impact your schedule and your success more than any other variable, and it's critical to map them out prior to designing your plan. Finally, the app itself is the biggest driver in identifying your needs. You will want to look closely at what your app does, how it does it, and why it's being made, to understand how to test it. With these four needs, keep in mind, some of the things that you are identifying today may change tomorrow. That's just how it is. App development is a fluid process, and while it's frustrating, being flexible means being successful. Seasoned test managers learn to prepare for these kinds of things. Flexibility is essential when starting at this stage. Identifying these four needs is simply giving you a step ahead of the process so that when you need to begin to plan, you don't waste valuable time. A lot of what you do during this stage will feel redundant to things you are doing later. However, when you sit down and write out a plan, you will recognize that this exercise made it a whole lot easier.