Conducting Structured Testing

Question 16: Have you conducted structured testing?

21 Ways to Excel at Project Management

Good Practice: You should test deliverables early on. One of the fundamental lessons drawn from delivering IT projects is the later you leave the testing in the development cycle, the more it costs to fix.

A structured test plan should be developed and then performed by people independent of the development team. Besides testing the deliverables, you should also test the overall infrastructure over which the deliverables will run. The major components in the architecture should be tested before building the final deliverables.

The test development lifecycle contains the following elements:

1. Test plan.
2. Test specification.
3. Code tests.
4. Validate test.
5. Run tests.

Test documentation is a needed tool for managing and maintaining the testing process. Documents produced by testers should answer the following questions:

• What to test?
• How to test?
• What are the results?

"When end users get involved in the final stages of testing, light bulbs go on, and they often have an 'aha' moment. Unfortunately, that is often too late." - Frank R. Parth

Common Mistakes

• No test plans and therefore no testing.
• Testing conducted in an ad-hoc manner by the development team.
• Waiting until the deliverable is deployed before testing.
• Using test time as contingency.

Warning Sign! Documentation or testing stages are cut to make up time.