Who tests for the IT support

[Jesper]

Hi all,

I am curious as to how testing relates to end-user support.

If you work in a company that produces a software product, how are support and testing related? Are you perhaps involved in testing quick fixes before they are given to the customers? Or is it mostly that they get filtered to the Product owner to be bundled in releases?

I guess most software shops will have users, and that in most cases “end user support” will be an issue. I am curious as to how the solutions provided by support are tested? I myself did IT support once, sometimes we would join to establish and share practical solutions.

I use some productivity apps, most of them have a “submit a bug”. When I have done so (and I have) the supporter always asked on “how to reproduce” – so some solution testing must be going on.

[Tassawer]

Support staff are required to document their customer problem/bugs/complains inside bug tracking system, bug fixes are normally bundled inside a release but if a bug report is of high significance and requires immediate solution then a patch for that fix can also dispatched.

[Archana]

I have been a part of the technical support team for HP LoadRunner quite some time back.

The support team would just provide solutions / workarounds / patches to the affected user.

If this could be applied to the product in general, an enhancement request was made, which would be taken up by the R&D team. And then the regular development and testing would follow by separate teams.

The support team was not much involved in actual testing of the product. We were rather involved in testing of customer applications using the product.

[Author]

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