Aligning Testing with the Project
Rex Black · 2016
This chapter covers the important concept of fitting software testing into its project context. Failing to fit testing to the project is as dangerous as testing the wrong attributes of the system or using the wrong test strategies. Since testing does not generate money by itself, some organization is paying for testing to happen. Testing does not happen for its own sake, out of intellectual curiosity or to serve some noble purpose. Much of the time, good testing groups deliver their value in the form of timely, accurate assessments of quality presented to the project team and managers in a credible, comprehensible way. One common way of fitting testing activities into a project is to break the overall testing effort into a sequence of phases or levels. These levels are often organized by the sequence in which portions of the system become ready to test. Each phase then serves a high-level test objective. Proper definition of entry and exit criteria in test plans ensures smooth transitions between the phases or levels. Test planning also attends to the hand-offs between responsible parties that are essential to effective and efficient testing. The arrowheads facing back into the requirements, design, and implementation processes indicate that test analysis, design, and implementation often locate bugs that can be removed early in the project, before test execution starts.