Testmanagement is a process that stretches throughout all static and dynamic Process-Lifecycle-Activities. It deals with the planning, preparation and evaluation of softwareproducts and connected workpackages in order to check if the specified requirements are met, to demonstrate that they serve their purpose and to discover errors. Therefor it is essential for a system go-live to make sure it meets all requirements by applying a suitable testmanagement. Our consultants will support you with their years of experience in testing and testmanagement throughout all project- and testphases in order to guarantee the highest quality for system or product acceptance.
Why testing is of unique relevance?
Tests are supposed to keep the amount of errors during realisation and implementation as low as possible and allow developers to learn during the project from recognized errors. Thus it is of high importance that the customer is able to assert through testing, that the requirements are implemented correctly which are defined in the specification. The product-acceptance is key for the project completion. The so-called acceptance test increases the trust in the developed product.
Phases of project- and testmanagement
Testmanagement can and should be devided into several phases just like projectmanagement. Subsequently each phase will have corresponding activities / workpackages assigned. There might be some smaller deviations between the phases of test- and projectmanagement.
During the intiation- and planning phase the basic conditions for the test have to be set. During this phase, the testmanager has a specific importance as he has to define the test-criteria, set the undertaken tests and guarantee the availability of the infrastructure and the testing staff. During the implementation-phase the testmanager has to monitor the progress and adjust the test-goals and -criteria if necessary as well as reporting to the stakeholders. The testmanager thus plays a signifcant part in the success of the test itself.
V-Model
Several models and procedures have been defined in order to standardize the testmanagement-process. One of the most popular models is the so-called V-Model which assigns each development step a test stage to validate the respective development step. Furthermore each stage is verified by the following step. This means that the component-test validates whether the component has been specified correctly, while the the component specofication verifies whether the technical system-draft is correct. This allows an ongoing monitoring and control of the requirements.
Source: Crößmann, Saber, & Islam, 2007, p. 6
Test stages
As shown in the V-Model, there are four different test stages. The component test checks if each component complies with the requirement coming from the specification and whether each component individually functions together as a whole. Subsequently follows the integration test that checks if all modules and sub-systems collaborate correctly. The last step before acceptance is the system test. All requirements within the system are checked and if necessary verified with functional and non-functional tests. It is important hereby that the testenvironment for the systemtest is as close to the production environment as possible. To finish, the acceptance test checks if the system contains all functionalities from the customer point of view that were defined in the client specification.