Managing the Testing Process - General Description

Test managers must take a potentially infinite job‹testing a computer system‹ and accomplish it within tight time and resource restraints. It's a tall order, but successful test managers have found proven ways to handle the challenges.

This course will give attendees the tools they need to succeed as test managers. We'll look at quality risk analysis, test estimation, and test planning. We'll discuss developing high-quality test systems‹test cases, test data, test tools, even automated test systems‹that improve over time. We'll talk about tracking bugs and test cases. We'll discuss ways to derive and present metrics, charts, and graphs from the test results.

We'll also cover the human side of test management. We'll look at ways to measure and manage the skills testers need. We'll discuss hiring testers. We'll talk about education and certification for testers. We'll examine some ways to motivate and reward testers‹and some ways not to! We'll cover working effectively within the project organization, which is especially challenging when you're the bearer of bad news.

We'll also look at the context of testing. We'll discuss system development lifecycles and how they affect testing. We'll cover testing as an investment. We'll finish up by discussing test labs, test environments, and hardware issues.

The materials presented in the course follow Rex Black's book, Managing the Testing Process, which is the distillation of over two decades of software, hardware, and systems experience.