I would much rather test than create test documents. Adam White once told me, “If you’re not operating the product, you’re not testing”.
It’s soooooo easy to skip all documentation and dive right in to the testing. It normally results in productive testing and nobody misses the documents. Until…three years later, when the prog makes a little change to a module that hasn’t been tested since. The team says the change is high risk and asks you which tests you executed three year ago and how long it took.
Fair questions. I think we, as testers, should be able to answer. Even the most minimal test documentation (e.g., test fragments written in notepad) should be able to answer those questions.
If we can’t answer relatively quickly, we may want to consider recording better test documentation.
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If you are in QA and think documentation is waste of time. I propose you find another line of work.
It is not so dreadful for me to write test documents, in fact, I like it. :)
Although, I think you need to have a good understanding of the product, so I prefer writing test documents as I test the application.
I'm sort of on the fence, I think documentation is important but sometimes we spend too long on it to avoid more practical testing work.
The testing is of course the most important, but documenting it is almost as important.
But think about what is important to document and remove what's waste.
There are also alot of ways documenting can be automated.
Testing while reporting is helping me to focus. Instead of scribble in my personal notebook, which I would have done anyway, I add a title, date and some simple structure to my test notes and store it online where my team mates have access to it. Doesn't have to be harder than that.