Testing Strategy – Challenge

Session type: 120 min tutorial

Session level: Beginner

Co-trainers: Daniel Dec, Kamila Gawrońska, Tomasz Wierzchowski

What is your first step when you enter to a new software project? Is it a choice of automation tool, bug tracker, or maybe discussion with your project manager and client about expectations of final quality of the product?

For majority of you the most important question would be, how are we going to assure quality or even more general, what does quality mean in the given context. What approach to follow to assure the system is at the right quality level before delivering. Shouldn't the answer be given in your testing strategy/plan? Some say in Agile world we don’t need any old fashioned documentation, everything is changing from sprint to sprint so what's the point to have test plan or test strategy? Some say we need it only when audit is on the horizon.

From another point of view, can we always explain to our client why we test some areas of the software where skipping others? Do we know what to focus on during our tests, and what is the risk we take on ourselves not covering everything in tests?

How deep should we explore our system to find vulnerabilities? Is performance important? Is test automation effective or needed in our case?

At our workshop we would try to prove that test strategy and planning is a process not a bunch of dead documents. Join us in designing effective approach of assuring quality in the real life project and check how it works for you.

You will have an occasion to create test strategy in a group for a given problem (software project). Each group will be fed with a set of hints from different worlds. You will judge which one are useful and which are not. Be cautious - you may be given some extra cards to play to improve your team work or against other. Another thing is how easily strategy can be adapted when a change come to the system.

All of that filled with a great synergy, knowledge sharing, little competition and fun. Finally, we will compare strategies strong and weak points, see which is better in which area. We also answer what are sources of useful hints.

Key take-aways:

• Benefits and purpose of creating test plan, test strategy. Participants will learn how to create test plan, strategy by themselves.
• Learning how to adapt and create living, well suited strategy for assuring quality for whole project lifecycle.
• Toolbox that will help with creating testing strategy - we will present different perspectives, various methods, checklists and areas of consideration.