4 - The Management and Planning of Testing

Summary

Plans are worthless, the process of planning is invaluable

Eisenhower

Introduction

This chapter deals with the issues associated with the organization, management, and high-level planning of the testing process.

A generic approach to organizing the testing process is described, which can be applied to businesses involved in developing and/or testing software. The chapter discusses the implications for the testing process of the size of the business, its prevailing quality culture, and (where appropriate) the maturity of its software development process.

The case studies in Part 2 provide specific examples of how a number of different businesses have customized this generic approach in response to their own particular organizational, management, and testing requirements.

This chapter also considers a number of key requirements that must be considered in implementing a rigorous, effective, and efficient testing process: the need for configuration management and defect tracking and the need to ensure that each of the requirements of the Application Under Test (AUT) has been verified. The issues associated with each of these requirements are discussed and recommendations for supporting them are provided.

The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of risk-based testing and its use in the management and planning of testing projects.