Importance of recording setup time

QA Desk, 6.18 pm.

I’m still at my desk, adding up some test cases to the test plan, for the new component that we need to integrate. The whole day is pretty much spent for setting up the environment. Come to think of it, can we say that the majority of times are spent prior to the test to setup the environment the testing itself?

When I was in Company M, in our Test Management System (which is developed in-house by Company M itself), we need to enter execution time, investigation time, and setup time for certain test cases. Then at the end of the period, let say after the project finishes, post-mortem perhaps, the team lead will go into the system and start mining the data to see if there is any spike on setup time, execution time, or investigation time. From there, improvements can be suggested, like:

- Having a dedicated environment
Saves time to setup each time the same test is needed, especially for new hires. However, it will constrain the resources to be used up for other activities. The dedicated environment can sometimes be sacrificed to be dissembled for that purpose. My personal case, is when we built up some environments, they only stay intact for awhile, until the stringent time comes, that everybody starts dismantling them for other uses.

- Clear written test cases
How many times do we face problems when the test cases are not clearly mention some settings or some features need to be enabled for the test? What can be done is that the tester should be encouraged to update the test cases every time they found something useful to be added

Like what some people said, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

In Company E, it is not required yet to record the setup time. Would be good eh, if I suggest this to my boss?