TPI, a tactical application

Ever since reading the Test Process Improvement book by Martin Pol and Tim Koomen, I’ve found it to be one of the more useful tools of my trade primarily because of its foundations in reality. I once had the opportunity to meet Martin Pol at a conference and baled him up for as long as I could with the express goal of understanding where TPI came from. I’d like to take this opportunity to both apologise and thank Martin for his patience and understanding!

Since then I’ve spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on the various aspects of what TPI gives us and have used it as a tool on numerous occasions to frame solutions to various testing problems I’ve encountered across the testing spectrum. I think it’s now become such an integral part of how I approach test management and test design that I don’t even realise I’m using it.

The changes introduced by TPI Next refine the Key Areas further and, in my opinion, bring an even more realistic perspective on the test process although the concept of moment of involvement still stands true. The reason for saying this is:

1. being involved early can help determine stakeholder commitment as risks identified can influence the stakeholders.

2. the degree of involvement, partially determined by the stakeholder commitment, can be influenced.

What I have found is that the depth of stakeholder commitment can be very much determined by what level of pain has or is being experienced. Whilst this may sound cynical my experiences find this to be somewhat true.

A case in point is a recent performance testing project I worked on where the first attempt at implementation failed in one of those blaze of media coverage ways. The first iteration of implementation had not addressed performance testing in any significant way. The very public and highly publicised failure had significantly increased the stakeholders commitment to performance testing. Could being involved earlier have changed the stakeholder commitment?

On the flip side of this a fixed price project we did some years ago which made me very nervous due to the dependency we had on the developers, to this day is probably the most profitable project I’ve done. We were involved right from the early design stage and had significant input into the design process from a static testing perspective. This allowed us to develop a testing solution that significantly reduced the test effort for each code iteration. Ultimately, the project was finished 3 months early and encountered no post implementation issues.

So, rather than looking at the test process from a macro perspective, I utilise the key areas of TPI to provide a simple SWOT state of the overall project and, from that determine what needs to be done to firstly, achieve delivery and secondly, develop a basis for ongoing improvement. Fundamentally, irrespective of the stakeholder commitment the moment of involvement is the defining event in terms of what is possible to be achieved. The commitment of the stakeholder then determines what can actually be achieved.

At its most basic level time is the biggest asset a testing delivery person can have. When I refer to time it is not in the context of being able to do more testing but is from the perspective of being able to implement a better testing solution. This is especially true in the case of performance testing where execution windows are very limited and preparation times typically lengthy.

A high stakeholder commitment, for example, late in the delivery timeline will not significantly increase the range of testing outcomes that can be achieved.

A common counter argument to early testing engagement is the cost of bearing a testing capability throughout the early stages of the project. This moment of involvement does not necessarily mean a full time commitment to the project but engagement at critical times such as:
Project initiation;
Project costing;
Requirements analysis/walk throughs; and
Specification walk throughs.

About the author:
Elliot Ashton is a Principal Consultant with TestLogistics Pty Ltd based in Sydney, Australia. With nearly 20 years experience in most areas of testing Elliot has been involved with some of the biggest and most complex deliveries across various industries. Most recently he has worked in the performance testing space. He is also an occasional speaker at various groups.

The Necessity of Outsourcing Your Software Testing

According to market research studies, 40% of undecided application break time is brought by failure of application or bugs, 20% by hardware and 40% by errors in application, disasters or environmental aspects. So, 80% of unexpected downtime can be eliminated by IT process improvements, complete training on operations and pre-arrangement testing. This is important, but it is not certainly the main activity of majority organizations that require it. Outsourcing the software testing process will help a company to focus on its other core activities while the software testing work is handled by the experts proficiently, making sure of quality results. The company will save time and money on the procedure that would be too annoying and pretty tiring if done internally.

Importance of Software testing: Software testing is an important step in any project of software development. Testers and developers should make sure that products that are newly developed match the performance and practical requirements and that those products are trustworthy to function constantly under each circumstance. The dangers of launching a product that is not accomplished fully are abundant now than before because of the change in demands and assumptions of the end consumers.

A consistent approach to quality, started early in the lifecycle of software, can reduce the cost of accomplishing and maintaining the software considerably. This largely minimizes the risk related with arranging low quality software.

The important improvements that come along with aligning software testing and accent the normally mentioned reasons are as follows:

1. Save money and time by recognizing defects sooner.
2. Reduce and avoid downtime of development
3. Give better customer service by developing a better application
4. Understand the requirements of users and satisfy them
5. Construct a desired modifications list and improvements for later version.
6. Recognize areas where developers and programmers require training.
7. Recognize areas where developers and programmers require training

Software testing process stages

1. Providers concentrate mainly on quality of product, which is determined through the below mentioned basic practices:

1. Find defects of software quality in documents.
2. Suggest on the noticed quality of software.
3. Prove and authorize the assumptions made in pattern and requirement features through strong demonstration.
4. Authorize that the products works according to the design.
5. Authorize that the requirements are applied properly.


Author Bio:
Samuel is writing about software testing, load testing, functional testing, web testing and etc based on his reading and research for a Testing Sydney company.

How to Chose a Software Testing Company

A software tester is the main area to concentrate while determining a company for software testing. There are two most well-known certifications these days and they are ISTQB and ISEB. Try and make sure that the testers that you chose have these certifications at base level. Another important factor related to software testers is their level of experience. Lot of software testing companies claim that their testers have I.T experience of five years, that means they have these five years of experience anywhere in Information Technology field. While choosing the software testing company, you should ask them about the actual years of professional software testing experience.

Most companies that test software offer a large range of services related to software testing. You should be very cautious while hiring them, as most of them will promote their services but it is not necessary them all of them have the proficiency or skill to do that. There are various types of software testing service that should be offered by professional companies and two of them are as follows:

Functional Testing: Usual products related to software these days include huge amounts of important functionality and difficult features, functional testing becomes most important in development of any software when added to the most important time stresses to have the product launched. Manual functional testing methods of a software tester have been shown to be very efficient at actually deciding whether the functionality actually works or not. Flexible software testers can operate from their own test cases or utilize any already existing test cases. Good software testers effortlessly make use of ad-hoc methods while accomplishing any tests to increase the coverage of test. The main intention at the time of occupational testing is to focus any issues as soon as possible so it can be clarified by the developers. This can of course efficiently minimize the development costs to the company.

Creation of Test Case: This is a famous service that normally involves making elaborated test cases, these cases can be used not only project under test, but also because of their high quality can be used again on upcoming projects and shape a good quality asset of test documentation. Reputed testers will gather all the necessary information to generate the test cases, normally from design documentation, developer interview and other needs. When the information has been observed, software tester will make a cultured spreadsheet of excel which consists of version details, test cases, environment setup and result sheets. In each stage of development of test cases clients are involved in the form of a process of test case review.

Author Bio:
Samuel is writing about software testing, load testing, functional testing, web testing and etc based on his reading and research for a Testing Sydney company.