Category Archives: Test Planning & Strategy

Addressing topics around designing test approaches, incorporating test techniques, setting up testing, and communicating the strategies for implementation

None Shall Pass…unless? Managing Risk with Quality Gates

A common element to a test strategy or master test plan is to include a description of how the project will mature the software system towards release, and how the project team can be sure that progress is on track … Continue reading

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You Are a Scientist

On May 15, 2012, Christin Wiedemann presented “You Are a Scientist” at the Let’s Test Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. A software tester is nothing less than a scientific researcher, using all his/her intelligence, imagination and creativity to gain empirical information … Continue reading

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A Mandated Tool

In my current context I’m required to use a certain tool for managing the test effort; you probably know the tool. I won’t mention it by name unless the vendor pays me to, but it’s the first on the list … Continue reading

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Beyond the Agile Testing Quadrants

You can build the right product and you can build it right, and still not deliver value to the customer/user. For any number of reasons, they don’t adopt it easily, completely, or on time. You can blame them. Luddites. You … Continue reading

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Test Management: Leading Your Team To Success (Course Extract)

I have extracted a small deck of slides from my course “Test Management: Leading Your Team To Success”.  Hope you enjoy. You can download the slides here: Test Management – Leading Your Test Team to Success (Course Extract)

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Follow-up on xBTM

Background At STARWest 2011, I gave a talk about xBTM together with Michael Albrecht. Jon Bach was in the audience, and he gave us some very valuable feedback on our idea and how we presented it. This blog post is … Continue reading

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Scalable V-Model: An Illustrative Tool for Crafting a Test Approach

I recommend a testing approach that is risk-driven, leverages agile principles, encourages early validation and verification activities, reports progress with practical metrics, and is controlled through hand-offs and acceptance criteria overlaid on the development cycle via a scalable “V-model” (whether … Continue reading

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UAT as a Lean Startup

User acceptance testing (UAT) – that misunderstood human activity that is squeezed from front to back by late delivery and set-in-stone go-live dates – is an opportunity to use lean tactics. The user acceptance team is a cross-functional team. An … Continue reading

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Working with Business Testers

From Nancy Kelln’s presentation at STPCon, “Leading Business Testers”, business testers: are not testers do not want to be testers require guidance and support require their expectations to be managed may be working part-time on the project and all of … Continue reading

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Going To The Extreme – xBTM

Now that the project has finished it is time to sum up my experiences of adapting Thread-Based Test Management (TBTM). Since I generally do not believe in rigorously adhering to a protocol, I ended up not using TBTM strictly, but … Continue reading

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