Testing is a key phase in the product development cycle & is the last gate to rectify product defects prior to it being delivered to the Customer. After product delivery, fixing customer reported defects is very costly as it would affect the company’s reputation and also attract financial penalties.
Exploratory testing is a critical cog in the cycle of testing. Exploratory testing requires careful observation, critical thinking, reasoning & diverse ideas with a very clear understanding of the subject. This form of test yields bugs which other wise would have been missed with the conventional approach of testing. Voice Quality testing is one area where exploratory tests need to be done since voice quality is a key marketing factor that operators use to differentiate their network from other operators’ networks. Customers have zero tolerance to voice quality issues & hence voice quality testing demands special attention. Testing challenges arise from the fact that the actual field environment is different from the lab environment. Losses due to fading, obstructions & noise, which the signals propagating over air are subjected to, need to be simulated in the lab. In addition to this, there are other parameters that tend to affect voice quality. This paper attempts to highlight the importance & need for exploratory testing by explaining a case study done on voice quality. Normally Voice quality tests are done on a full span configuration under the assumption that there would be no impact to voice quality because of backhaul. As part of an exploratory test scenario, an attempt was made to analyze the impact of voice quality scores in a fractional span configuration & the test results from the study indicated that voice quality is impacted by backhaul due to delay. The paper also provides insights into the solutions proposed to improve voice quality scores.
