Managing the Testing Process: Practical Tools and Techniques for Managing Hardware and Software Testing

Chapter 4

An Exciting Career in Entomology Awaits You: A Bug-Tracking Database

You now have a thorough test program put together. Time to relax, exchange the quadruple espressos for a few nice cold Warsteiners, and coast, right? After all, the only work that remains is executing the test plan, and surely your test technicians, with a little guidance from the test engineers, can handle that.

Definitely not. Your job as test manager remains as important as ever when you move into the stage of implementing the test plan and gathering data related to that plan.

Once test execution begins, even the most organized approach will not save you from the excitement of the project going on around you. A quality risk analysis, test estimate, test plan, test cases, test tools, test architecture, measures of test coverage, and all the other program components you've developed are proactive objects. If your analysis was correct, they should only require minor, incremental adjustments during test execution.

With test execution underway, though, you enter the world of the reactive and the dynamic. Following a test plan diligently and using a test system properly but flexibly require continual adjustments in your priorities, meticulous attention to details both clear and subtle, and adaptation to the endless changes in the project.

You will soon find yourself awash in the data generated by your shiny new test system. This is good, because this is the objective. Testing should generate useful information ...