Overview

A 2-day interactive workshop focused on test planning and management. Emphasizing the idea that testing is an information service, this course gives software test leads and managers a framework for guiding the test effort to provide accurate, relevant, and timely information to enable project decision makers to steer the project and reduce risk.

At the heart of this course is a case study that prompts participants to plan the test effort for a fictional project.

Outline

1. Setting the Context
   • Testing as an information service
   • Identifying stakeholders
   • Risks and information
   • Formality and rigor
2. The Test Process
   • Test levels and types
   • The relationship between test types and questions stakeholders want answered
   • How the development process affects the testing process
   • Centralized v. decentralized test organizations
   • Example test processes
   • The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle applied to testing
3. Test Activities
   • Determining test activities to be performed
   • Manual v. automated testing
   • Scripted v. exploratory testing
   • Finding the right balance of testing activities for your project
4. Resources
   • People: who will perform the various testing activities?
   • Hardware and software: establishing the test environment and choosing tools
   • Budget: estimating costs and negotiating for budget
5. Estimates and Schedules
   • Triple constraints applied to testing
   • Bottom up v. top down scheduling
   • Prioritizing
   • Ideal time v. real time
   • The Delphi method of estimation
   • Using historic data
   • Test cycles
   • Estimates, probabilities, and risk
   • Negotiating time and defending estimates
6. Creating the Test Plan
   • Writing a test plan that stakeholders will read
   • Getting agreement: test plan walkthroughs that work
7. Guiding the Testing Effort
   • Coordinating test efforts
   • Advocating for bug fixes
   • Mid-course corrections
8. Measuring and Reporting Progress
   • Metrics
   • The project dashboard
   • Formal test results reports
9. The Test Manager as Advisor
   • Diagnosing project problems
   • Software development and systems thinking
   • Better testing, worse quality?
   • When testing is "the bottleneck"
   • Delivering bad news
   • Facilitating difficult decisions
10. Wrap-up
    • Summary
    • Next steps