As the newest member of the Newfangled team, I’ve been experiencing quite a few “firsts” over the past four months. Right now, the first website project that I will see through from conception to completion has reached the Whitescreen QA (Quality Assurance) phase. The programming is in place on the staging/development site, but the design hasn’t been applied and the content hasn’t been entered.
It’s a pretty amazing feeling to finally be able to click through a website that you helped conceive and that you’ve been planning for months. We’re working with our developer George on this project– and he’s really done a wonderful job!
Previously, I had developed a QA Test Plan for this site. I went through the approved prototype– page by page, link by link– and made a thorough chart of the different functionality that should be included in the whitescreen. Then, over the past couple days, Steve and I have been painstakingly comparing the whitescreen, the QA test plan, and the prototype– going through each whitescreen page to make sure everything matches the prototype, that every piece is where it should be, and that it all works properly. Naturally, we might not catch every bug right away (a lot of the “hidden” ones pop up during content entry), but at least we get a head start on testing the site before we hand it over to our client.
This morning, we had our first CMS training call for this website. Our clients got to see the whitescreen for the first time, and we demonstrated some of the basic functionality. I hope they enjoyed seeing their brand new site in action as much as I did, and I’m excited for the next phase!