End-to-End Testing with the Heuristic Test Strategy Model
You have just been assigned a new testing project. Where do you start? How do you develop a plan and begin testing? How will you report on your progress? Paul Holland shares new test project approaches that enable you to plan, test, and report effectively. Paul demonstrates ideas, based on the Heuristic Software Test Model from Rapid Software Testing that can be directly applied or adapted to your environment. In this hands-on tutorial, you’ll be given a product to test. Start by creating three raw lists—product coverage outline, potential risks, and test ideas—that help ensure comprehensive testing. Use these lists to create an initial set of test charters. We employ “advanced” test management tools (Excel and whiteboards with Sticky Notes) to create useful test reports without using “bad metrics” (counts of pass/fail test cases, percentage of test cases executed vs. plan). Look forward to your next testing project with these new ideas and your improved planning, testing, and reporting skills.
With more than twenty years’ experience in software testing, Paul Holland is a senior director of test engineering at New York City-based Medidata Solutions, Inc. Previously, he spent two years as head of testing at a small consultancy, two years as the principal consultant/owner at Testing Thoughts, and seventeen years at Alcatel-Lucent. Paul specializes in adapting testing methodologies to reduce waste, and to increase effectiveness and efficiency by finding ways to document only what needs to be documented, modifying reporting of test activities to provide actionable information to stakeholders, and reducing or eliminating potentially harmful metrics. Paul is one of four instructors of the Rapid Software Testing course, developed by James Bach and Michael Bolton.