Effective Methods for Software Testing, Third Edition

Chapter 7. Step 1: Organizing for Testing

Software development involves two concurrent processes: building the software and testing it. It does not matter whether testing is performed by developers or by an independent test team; what is important is that someone has responsibility for testing. This chapter defines the tasks to prepare for testing and to organize the test team.

If the developers do the testing, it is probably not necessary for the testers to ensure the project estimate is adequate and to develop a process to track the project’s status. However, when independent testers perform the testing, unless they can control their own test budget and the project team has an effective project status reporting process, the testers should perform the last task.

Objective

Testing can fall short of expectations for two reasons. First, the necessary preparation may not be accomplished. This chapter and the next discuss the needed preparatory work prior to executing tests. Second, many testing tasks are never completed because inadequate resources are allocated.

The objective of this chapter is to enable you to define the scope of testing and ensure that adequate time and resources are available for testing. If testing is included within the developer’s budget, the test manager needs to ensure that the estimate is adequate for testing. The test manager must also ensure that overruns in project development will not restrict the amount of testing as defined in the test plan.

Workbench

Figure ...