Test Management

Introduction to Test Management

Test management is a process of planning, estimating, monitoring, and controlling test activities which are 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 are going to discuss various phases that are important 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 need to decide whether to use the independent test team, application domain, and risk level. As the size and complexity of the project increase, it is important 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 occurred frequently, some occurred infrequently. Two main roles that found ar test leader and tester. The test reader is the person who is responsible for project management and its activities, who directs, controls, plans, and regulates the evaluation of the project. Tester is a skilled professional who is involved in the system or component testing

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 test approaches like analytical, methodical, model-based, dynamic, standard-compliant, regression, and consultative.
• Test planning for system and scheduling test execution.
• Writing test execution schedule 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:

• Test team and test manager receive feedback on testing work to improve the testing of the project
• Provide clear visibility about the test results.
• Measures the testing status, exit criteria, and test coverage to ensure that the test work is done.
• Gather and store data so that it can be used to estimate future test efforts.

Monitoring is all about gathering test data and reporting test status is about 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 try to achieve the best possible outcome for the project.

4. Configuration Management

Configuration management is a process of applying technical and administrative direction and surveillance to identify and document the physical and functional characteristics of a configuration item, 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, make sure that the selection of configuration management procedures and tools are 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 using the documentation information.

5. Risk and Testing

Risk-based testing is testing performed to reduce the level of product risk and inform stakeholders about the status. It involves the identification of product risk and uses od risk level to guide the test process. Risk-based testing start with product risk. One technique to overcome this problem is a detailed analysis of requirements, user documentation, design specifications, and other things. 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 incident logging is the process of recording all the small to large details of any incident that occurred. An incident report is a document that is used to report on any incident that has occurred
As Incidents can be managed to resolution, managers assign a priority level to the changes. Incident t reports can be managed through the incidents report life cycle.

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, the fifth phase addressed the risk with its levels and techniques. Last, that is the sixth phase covered incident management.

Recommended Articles

This is a guide to Test Management. Here we discuss an introduction and top 6 processes of Test Management in detail. You can also go through our other related articles to learn more –

1. Test Management Tools
2. Incident Management Plan
3. Project Team Members
4. Project Risk Management Plan