A Balanced Approach to Software Testing

In his reconstruction speech given to Congress on April 11, 1865, Abraham Lincoln warned the nation that creating inflexible plans will, “…become a new entanglement”. The quality assurance manager can draw a number of lessons from the broader context  of the speech. Here is the complete thought. …so new and unprecedented is the whole case,

Quality Assurance Planning – Part Five (A Final Word – Nothing trumps experience)

You will become better at planning your test cycles the more often you execute them. There is no substitute for experience. A plan is basically a prioritized list of tasks assigned to a resource. A plan is like a noun. It describes but accomplishes nothing. It is the schedule that moves your plan into action.

Quality Assurance Planning – Part Four (Selecting the Appropriate Test Type)

Here is how I break-down quality assurance types and what questions I ask to determine which should be included in the test cycle: Development (Have the coding architectural errors been identified and resolved? This can only done as a white box test and requires a code review.) Installation (Does the application come on line after

Quality Assurance Planning – Part Three (Acceptance Testing)

Now that the system has been tested by the developer during their unit tests, the load test is complete and the quality assurance team has successfully executed their standard and new test cases, we are ready for our restaurant’s “Pre-Opening Reception”. The acceptance test is a purely black box test. The end user should focus