A Case Study of Grand River Hospital Website Evaluation

Grand River Hospital is a 567-bed hospital that serves Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, and nearby communities. It mainly operates through its KW and Freeport Sites, both situated in Kitchener.

This report focuses on Grand River Hospital and evaluates its website based on usability guidelines and certain quality components.

The KW Site of Grand River Hospital was once known as the K-W Health Centre and the Berlin-Waterloo Hospital. It’s located on King Street West, near the Kitchener-Waterloo border. It was founded in 1895 on land donated by Joseph E. Seagram. The Grand River Regional Cancer Centre opened here in 2003. This site is also supported by the Kitchener Helipad, which is found southeast along the edge of Walter Street and Wellington Street South.

What are the QA best practices in my business?

Standard Quality Assurance usually involves extensive work and coding before any testing is done. This results in finding more bugs closer to the release date. Automation is key because it provides quick feedback, enabling continuous integration—an essential part of the agile process. It also helps reduce costs and improve team efficiency, which is why QA managers should be open to implementing automation practices. Many QA engineers talk about 'test coverage,' which offers a broad view of the application’s quality. But for real quality, both tests and code coverage need consideration. For instance, even with 100% test coverage, you should aim for at least 90% code coverage for the best results. QA engineers are trained to catch bugs, but a smart QA expert also thinks about how to prevent them in the first place. Traditional QA starts with UI testing, but an agile approach starts with unit and integration testing, then moves to the UI level. This helps prevent bugs from affecting larger parts of the development process and potentially delaying delivery.

What skills are needed for me as an agile tester?

Agile software development is slowly but surely becoming the norm for many organizations, and for good reason. Done right, it results in a stronger application that responds more quickly to changing customer demands, and it generally performs well in competitive markets. Flexibility is one of the core principles of the agile methodology. This means creating an environment where roles are more flexible. Testers aren't just involved in the final stages of development but are integrated into all stages. In this closely knit, more collaborative environment, there’s more room for role flexibility, and this is encouraged to ensure everyone is working toward the same goal.

In an interview with Tech Target, agile coach George Dinwiddie explained that while testers don’t need to be coding experts, having some coding knowledge or a willingness to learn can be beneficial. Agile development is more goal-oriented than process-oriented. One of the best ways to speed up time to market without compromising testing reliability is to automate repetitive tests. This includes regression tests, which in an agile environment need to be run more frequently than in a traditional development lifecycle. Regression tests must run every time a change is made to ensure the changes don’t affect the functionality of the previous features. Given the frequency and speed of changes in agile testing, these tests need to run often. Automating them can be a huge help. This is why some coding knowledge can be useful for testers. According to Scrum, not all testers need automation skills, but those who do are more valuable to an agile, cross-functional team. While the ability to automate tests isn’t a must, it’s a skill testers should be willing to learn, as it can save a lot of time in agile development.

Effective testing methods can’t be practiced without strong internal communication. Working toward a common goal instead of just completing tasks means everyone needs to be on the same page. The best test management tool for an agile project is one that integrates with a development methodology, providing real-time tracking of progress; however, this alone isn’t enough. Testers need to work as an integral part of the team, meaning they should be able to communicate effectively with developers and designers. As mentioned earlier, understanding the responsibilities of other teams can help break down barriers between traditionally separate groups, fostering better appreciation of different roles. With shorter, more frequent sprints, testers will be more involved in development, meaning they need to synchronize their efforts with other teams. To do this, they need to stay on top of information management and be skilled at sharing it with relevant teams so everyone can understand it. They should also embrace collaboration as part of development, ensuring that other team members have access to all the information they need to do their jobs with the ultimate goal of creating the best solution for users.

How can I improve QA testing in my business?

Test strategies should be well-planned, defined, and documented. Good documentation is the tool that fosters effective communication within the development team. Therefore, early planning includes developing quality and test plans for a project. A quality management plan is a document that describes the acceptable level of product quality and outlines how the project will achieve this level. It’s not a required document, but it helps you plan all the activities needed to ensure the project meets your customer’s needs and expectations. The main goal of this plan is to guide project managers. Consequently, it should include the product’s quality requirements and describe how they should be verified.

Key parts of the quality management plan:

• Quality objectives
• Key project requirements and approach to be assessed for achieving quality level
• Quality standards
• Quality control and assurance activities
• Quality roles and responsibilities
• Quality tools
• Plan for reporting quality control and assurance issues

A test strategy is a high-level document derived from the Business Requirements Specification document. Usually, a project manager or a business analyst creates a test strategy to outline software testing approaches used to achieve testing objectives. A test strategy is driven by the project’s business requirements, which is why it aligns with the project manager’s responsibilities.

The main parts of a test strategy are:

• The scope of testing
• Test objectives
• Budget constraints
• Communication and status reporting
• Industry standards
• Testing metrics and measurements
• Defect management and tracking
• Configuration management
• Deadlines
• Test execution schedule
• Risk identification

In a smaller project, the test strategy might just be a test plan. But for a larger project, the project manager needs to create a test strategy as a separate, static document from which each test plan can be derived.

What QA methodologies can I apply for my business?

There are several types of QA testing, which are essential for ensuring your application is bug-free. Below, we've listed the most common QA testing methods to give you a broad understanding of the testing process and how it improves your application, website, or software. QA testing can be divided into two parts: functional and non-functional testing. Before we look at functional testing, let’s review some types of non-functional testing: security, compatibility, usability, and performance.

Security testing involves testing an application or website to find vulnerabilities and security gaps that could be exploited by attackers. The goal is to ensure no security risks could compromise users' data or other sensitive information.

Compatibility testing checks that an application is fully compatible with the devices and software it will run on. Several factors are tested during this stage, from devices to web browsers, operating systems, and major plugins.

Usability testing ensures that the application is easy to use and understand. The goal is to make sure the end user can use the application without confusion or frustration due to its UI and design.

Performance testing involves checking that the application performs well under various conditions that could affect users, from heavy load to limited battery power. The aim is to ensure the application works as it should and to find its limits using stress testing.

Functional testing checks an application to ensure it works correctly. The goal of this type of QA testing is to verify that the application works as expected, with no non-functional or problematic aspects that prevent it from functioning properly.

Unit testing involves breaking an application into units—small pieces of source code that can be tested individually. The goal is to test each unit in isolation without looking at the application as a whole. Since unit testing focuses on small, specific units of an application, it can be a slow process.

Integration testing involves testing multiple units to see how they work together. Unlike unit testing, which focuses on one unit in isolation, integration testing is about seeing how units interact as a group. Like unit testing, integration can be a slow, tedious process. QA teams often automate parts of the integration testing process to save time and improve efficiency.

System testing expands the scope of integration testing to test the entire system as a whole. A typical system test involves running the entire system to find previously unnoticed bugs, reliability issues, and major problems. As you can see, the different levels of automated testing involve a gradual increase in scope, from a single unit to a few related units to a full system.

Acceptance testing involves testing the application against its requirements. This stage of QA testing often involves end-user testers, who verify that the application functions as it should and delivers the expected results during regular use.

All these types of tests can be performed on the website to improve the site and business in all aspects.

Which skills are expected for me as a good tester?

Basic knowledge of Database/SQL: Software systems have a lot of data in the background. This data is stored in various types of databases like Oracle, MySQL, etc., in the backend. There will be situations when this data needs to be verified. Usually, basic/complex SQL queries can be used to check if the correct data is stored in the backend databases. Test management is essentially managing your testing-related artifacts. There are various tools available that can be used for test management. Therefore, it is crucial to have knowledge and working experience of such tools since they are used in most organizations. Knowledge and hands-on experience of any defect tracking tool: Defect tracking and defect life cycle are crucial parts of software testing. It is essential to manage defects properly and track them in an organized manner. Defect tracking becomes important because the entire team should be aware of the defects, including developers, analysts, and testers. Several tools are used to log defects, including QC, Bugzilla, Jira, etc. Knowledge and hands-on experience of automation tools: If you consider yourself an 'automation tester' after years of manual testing, then you should master a tool and gain thorough, hands-on experience of automation tools.

Note - Just knowing an automation tool isn't enough to crack an interview; you should have excellent hands-on experience, so practice the tool of your choice to achieve expertise. Knowledge of any scripting language like VBScript, JavaScript, C# is always beneficial as a tester if you are looking for a role in automation. Some companies also use Shell/Perl scripting, and there is a high demand for testers knowing the same. Again, it will depend on the company and which tools are used by that company.

What are the advantages of quality assurance in my business?

Quality assurance is a system designed to show organizational progress and to demonstrate to the public that a product or service meets quality standards, often set by industry or regulators. It's sometimes called quality control, but quality control deals more with the product after it's made. Quality control became common in manufacturing in the 1920s as a way to measure and control product quality. In the 1950s, quality assurance became important for overall health and public safety. Today, quality assurance focuses on the standards that go into a product or service before it reaches the public. Quality assurance uses auditors, both independent and sometimes in-house, to evaluate the processes that go into making products and providing services. When an organization has a standard quality assurance team, it lets corporate partners, customers, regulators, and government officials know that a product or service meets quality requirements.

What is the difference between QA and QC?

Quality Assurance, known as QA, focuses on preventing defects. QA ensures that the processes, procedures, and standards are developed for the project are correctly implemented.

Quality Control, known as QC, focuses on identifying defects. QC ensures that the processes, procedures, and standards are followed correctly in the project. QC activities monitor and verify that the project deliverables meet the defined quality standards.

Conclusion

The survey was quite helpful in various aspects, letting us know all the issues and good things about the website. The site is easy to use, navigate, browse, and access information for clients. Overall, the process can be effective for general inquiries and requests but is questionable regarding security aspects.