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Test Progress Reporting Using Functional Readiness One of the goals of testing is to find as many of the "big bugs" as possible while covering as much of the functionality as possible before the implementation date. On many projects the implementation date is not flexible and it is difficult to make a case to management for moving the date or at least considering the risk of implementing before making the decision. Management doesn't always get the "big picture" and detailed defect reports don't always reflect risk. In order to help the project team and management assess risk and make decisions during the course of the project, there needs to be a way to express testing status in a comprehensive "big picture" view. Functional readiness is a way to simply describe test status in the context of risk. The Functional Readiness Matrix (FRM) is a decision-making tool that summarizes these metrics. |
Robyn Brilliant
November 7, 2001 |
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What to Do When the Right Person Doesn't Come Along You've written the job description. You know just what you want in this employee. You have one tiny problem-you just can't find that person. Now what? Sometimes you can continue to wait for the right person to come along. Sometimes you choose to hire someone with inadequate skills. In either case, you don't have to just hope for the best. You have other proactive choices: hiring from within, hiring a candidate with some skills and training the rest, changing the way you work, and changing the job description. |
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Estimation for the Savvy Project Manager In this paper we will explore the significance of the initial project estimate to the project and suggests ways to approach developing this critical estimate. |
Douglas Muir
October 30, 2001 |
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Using Test Oracles in Automation When we design a test we identify what needs to be verified. A set of expected result values are needed for each test in order to check the actual results. Generation of expected results is often done using a mechanism called a test oracle. This paper describes the purpose and use of oracles in automated software verification and validation. Several relevant characteristics of oracles are included with the advantages, disadvantages, and implications for test automation. |
Douglas Hoffman
October 29, 2001 |
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Five Ways to Think about Black Box Testing Have you ever seen a software testing discussion erupt into a debate over the definition of black box testing, or the difference between black box and white box testing? It seems lots of people have lots of ideas about what the terms really mean. Columnist Bret Pettichord uses the five dimensions of testing to examine black box and white box testing. And he leaves you with a few puzzles to consider. |
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Software Inpection with CodeSurfer Despite the widespread adoption and success of software inspection, many software products continue to be released with large numbers of flaws. This can partly be attributed to the inherent complexity of software systems. The complexity of the software thwarts manual attempts to comprehend it. We believe that tools that allow reasoning about the deep structure of the code at a high level of detail will be extremely useful for doing software inspections. In this paper we describe how our own system - CodeSurfer - provides access to and queries on the system-dependence graph representation of a program for the purposes of helping with software inspections. |
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Streamlined Change Request Management Most start-up companies start with paper-based change request management tools and then migrate to automated solutions. Many of the change request management tools available on the market integrate with the change management tool, and ensure that all bug fixes in the code are controlled and managed. Critical bugs reported while the product is in the field require immediate code fixes. The origin of some of these bugs is in the early development phases of requirements and design and may require documentation changes. When the number of field reported bugs is high, maintaining the traceability of the fixes is critical to future development activities. Also, research shows that over 70% of the defects originate from the requirements and design phases and that the cost of fixing these defects in successive phases increases exponentially. The key then remains in developing a change request management tool, which integrates with the CM tool and tracks the changes to the impacted configuratio |
Nikhil Kalyanpur
October 23, 2001 |
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The Software Test Process for Managers (Der Software Testprozess für Manager) (Editor's note: This article is from a new book by the same author, written in German Der Software-Testprozess für IT-Manager: mit Qualitäts-Lexikon.) The aim of this book is to give project managers not focused on software testing and Quality Assurance a guidebook on how to implement a straightforward process in their projects. This is article an early draft. Feedback is appreciated and can be sent to [email protected]. |
Andreas von Grebmer
October 22, 2001 |
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Testing Your Worth There's no doubt that the current job market is tight and a little shaky for test professionals. In a climate where entire test groups are being laid off or trimmed to the bone, Johanna Rothman notices a trend in test management priorities that you might want to consider. Follow the story of how one test manager determined tester ROI and how testers might approach increasing their value. |
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The War Is Never Easy The paper describes how an organization plans and executes training to ensure the best possible use of resources to meet organizational objectives. There is a discussion of common problems, and measures to avoid or correct those problems. While the focus of the paper is achieving compliance with the CMM Training KPA, its content is relevant to any organization engaged in training technical personnel. |
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