TL;DR
Missing product feature is one of situation where test automation can not help you. You as a tester should raise a risk about product missing feature. FEW HICCUPPS heuristic is excellent tool that can help you to identify missing feature and to persuade product owner that should be included in product.
Let’s learn by example. I bought to my mom two years ago Samsung LED TV. Criteria was price and dimension. I installed it and hit AUTOMATED channel scan. First issue is that here in Croatia we have a lot of scrambled ariel channels. So after auto scan finished its job, it took me almost an hour to delete those scrambled channels. Not an easy task. I set channel order, and important note is that when my mom gets used to that order, she does not want a new one.
Few weeks ago, my mom told me that there is new local channel. I looked for feature manual channel scan, but there was no such feature (observe channel menu). Google answered that this is the case for all Samsung TVs.
I hit auto scan:
- user expectation broken – me spending one hour filtering out scrambled channels, my mom because she got new channel list.
This is from FEW HICCUPPS U, user desires inconsistency.
Using Google I investigated comparable products, Sony Bravia TV sets. Here is proof that they have manual scan feature. This is comparable product, first C from FEW HICCUPPS inconsistency.
Fast forward to present. It is Euro 2016 championship, and national television is broadcasting games in Full HD over ariel for free, just during the Championship. Unfortunately, not for me.
