Test Management is a series of planning, execution, monitoring and control activities that help achieve project goals. This course is designed for newly appointed Test Managers and gives you the tips, tools & procedure to steer your project to success.
Test management tools allow automatic generation of the requirement test matrix (RTM), which is an indication of functional coverage of the application under test (SUT).
Test Management tool often has multifunctional capabilities such as testware management, test scheduling, the logging of results, test tracking, incident management and test reporting.
An effective test management process should lead to one common goal: to ship high quality products that meet customer needs. To achieve this goal, it.s essential that teams work within a proven process framework. Competition among software suppliers to develop the best products in the shortest amount of time is leading to an increasing need for highly developed test management processes. As test teams work with development teams to ship finished products within tighter deadlines, the test management process has become the focus of attention. Ultimately, with the right focus, effective test management processes will not only increase customer satisfaction, but will lead to smoother and more consistent projects.
Test Management Activities
Effective test management is broken down into several phases, including planning, creation, execution and tracking.
Test Planning: The planning stage involves developing the overall direction and purpose of the test phase, including the specifics of why, when and where to test. Tests are created when there is a test motivator present, such as a specific requirement that must be validated. What needs to be tested is broken down into multiple test cases, while the question of where to test is usually determined by documenting the required software and hardware configurations. Once these details have been finalized, the determination of when to test is made by tracking the test iterations, cycles or time period.
Test Authoring: In the authoring stage, the steps that are required to complete a given test are captured, in order to answer the question of how a test will be conducted. In short this process, is about defining generic test cases which are then broken down into detailed test steps. These steps can then be developed as either manual or automated test scripts. For many teams this information is captured and stored in a test management tool.
Test Execution: During execution stage, the test cases are run in logical sets which are usually referred to as a test suite. Tests are run against a known configuration of the software/hardware under test and/or against a test environment. It is important to record the configuration for the purpose of recreating tests at a later stage.
Test Tracking: Depending on the test management tools utilized by the team, test results are logged. These results are then displayed and summarised via a dashboard or test metrics tool. Tracking is a necessity in the testing process, as quality metrics are required in order to effectively track how the test effort is progressing, and to measure the quality of the system or application.
Test Reporting: Test reporting, gives you the ability to evaluate testing efforts and communicate test results to other interested parties. The objective of this is to determine the current status for project testing, but to also provide details about the overall quality of the application or system. Where a test management application is used to track the test process reporting is usually complimented by project dashboards.
