Updated June 14, 2023
Introduction to Test Management
Test management is a process of planning, estimating, monitoring, and controlling test activities typically carried out by a test manager. Test management is a complex activity. Testing is often a distinct subproject within the larger software development, maintenance, or integration project. Testing usually accounts for a substantial proportion of the overall project budget. Therefore, we need to understand how to manage these test activities. In this article, we will discuss various essential phases in test management.
Top 6 Process of Test Management
The common phases involved in Test Management are as follows:
1. Test Organization
There is no right approach for test organization; the approach may vary based on the project requirements. Based on the project, we must decide whether to use the independent test team, application domain, and risk level. As the size and complexity of the project increase, it is essential to have independence in later levels of testing.
The location of the teams may also vary. There are various roles that people within the team play; some of these roles occur frequently, and some occur infrequently. Two main roles found are test leader and tester. The test reader is the person who is responsible for project management and its activities and who directs controls, plans, and regulates the evaluation of the project. A skilled professional involved in the system or component testing is called a tester.
2. Test Planning and Estimation
This involves the following steps –
- Identify the objectives and different levels of test planning.
- Finalize the test plan objective, test design, and test procedure documents according to the Standard for Software Test Documentation.
- Discuss various analytical, methodical, model-based, dynamic, standard-compliant, regression, and consultative test approaches.
- Test planning for system and scheduling test execution.
- Writing test execution schedules for test cases considering technical and logical dependency and priority.
- Listing various activities for test execution.
- Identification of entry and exit criteria for test levels and test cases.
3. Test Progress Monitoring and Control
Test monitoring can serve various purposes during the project, some of them are as follows:
- The test team and test manager receive feedback on testing work to improve the project’s testing.
- Provide clear visibility about the test results.
- Measures the testing status, exit criteria, and test coverage to ensure the test work is done.
- Collect and store data to facilitate the estimation of future test efforts.
Monitoring gathers test data and reports test status, effectively communicating our findings to other project stakeholders. With test progress monitoring, in practice, there is wide variability observed in how people report test status with the variations driven by the preference of the testers and stakeholders, the needs and goals of the project, requirements, time and money constraints, and tool limitations for reporting test status
Test control is about guiding the team and performing corrective actions to achieve the best possible outcome for the project.
4. Configuration Management
Configuration management applies technical and administrative direction and surveillance to identify and document a configuration item’s physical and functional characteristics, control the changes to those characteristics, record and report those changes and implementation status, and verify compliance with specified requirements. Configuration management is a complex task. Therefore, advanced planning may result in critical work. During project planning, ensure the selection of configuration management procedures and tools is correct. Note that all the configuration processes and mechanisms are correctly implemented, and all key interfaces of the test process should be documented for future use. So that if the issue has been diagnosed, we can try to solve it using the documentation information.
5. Risk and Testing
Risk-based testing is a type of testing that is performed to reduce the level of product risk and inform stakeholders about the status. It identifies product risk and uses the risk level to guide the test process. Risk-based testing starts with product risk. One technique to overcome this problem is a detailed analysis of requirements, user documentation, design specifications, etc. And another is to discuss the solution with project stakeholders to overcome the risk. Another is one-by-one stepwise discussion sessions with business stakeholders and the technical team.
6. Incident Management
Incident Management is a process of identifying, Investigating, and taking appropriate actions and disposing of incidents. It involves logging in the incident, classification, and identification of the incident logging is the process of recording all the small to large details of any incident. An incident report is a document used to report any occurred incident. As Incidents can be managed to resolution, managers assign a priority level to the changes. The incident report life cycle manages the handling of incident reports.
Conclusion
In this article, we have covered incident management in 6 phases. The first phase covers managing testers and testing activity. The second phase covers the planning and strategies for testing. The third phase covered test monitoring, reporting, and controlling. The fourth phase covered configuration management and the fifth phase addressed the risk with its levels and techniques. Finally, the sixth phase of incident management is the phase that covers incident resolution.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to Test Management. Here we discuss the introduction and top 6 processes of Test Management in detail. You can also go through our other related articles to learn more –
