HOW IT ALL COMES TOGETHER
REQUIREMENTS AND EXISTING SYSTEMS
Understanding your requirements and project goals
In order to successfully implement a testing strategy we must first identify the requirements of the project. We derive these from various documents such as the Statement of Work, Use Cases, Project Plans, High Level Designs, etc. For project upgrades we also analyse the existing system and how it is currently utilised. Once we have a project understanding we look at the testing strategy that best fits the projects goals.
TESTING ARTIFACTS
What we Deliver
There are many components to implementing testing methodologies however some are core to all implementations. These artifacts include a Test Strategy, Test Plans, Test Summary Reports, Defect Management, Risk and Issues Registry, Test Requirements, Test Cases, Test Scenarios, and Dashboards. These basic elements will provide full traceability and allows for stakeholders and project owners to assess risk and derive a level of confidence in the system which they can then pass on to their customers.
TO AUTOMATE OR NOT TO AUTOMATE
Is Automation really the answer?
Automation is an area that is believed would solve all of an organisations testing requirements. However as of yet it is not the case. Automation is good for some things and in effective for other areas of testing. If something is repeated over and over again then it could possibly be targeted for automation. However, even in these situations, it is not effective until the area targeted for automation has already passed a manual test. Where Automation excels is in Regression Testing and other areas of testing such as Performance, Security, Load Testing etc. The system needs to have already passed a manual test before it can be targeted for automation. It is also believed that automation would remove the overhead associated with testing. This again is not true. Sure it will remove the resources used to manual test a regression test suite however there will always be changes to a system which derives the need to also modify scripts. Therefore an automation specialist must also form part of a testing team.
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When assessing a clients needs we always consider implementing automation scripts as part of the delivery.