Testing is often associated at times with being a complex function to execute and deliver successfully, which can result in organisations rushing or pushing testing until it is too late in the development process. However, setting up testing projects for success does not have to be complex.

It is vital that businesses understand the value of testing and the importance of enhancing the productivity aspect. Once businesses have the ability and intelligence to leverage off their testing assets and data, they can start making insightful gains in key areas of their quality assurance and software testing mindset.

Here are three (3) best practices to setting up testing projects for success.

1. Creating a Testing Culture

Creating a testing culture within your business is a crucial step towards executing testing projects successfully. Everyone involved in product development should strive to understand the value, impact and benefits of testing and to realise the positive impact that it will have on efficiency.

So how do you create a testing culture?

• Business and Technology leaders are in an ideal position to set the tone for how testing are going to be perceived within the organisation. Highlighting the value of testing in business and technology strategies is a key component to gaining collective buy in for testing. Testing is a quality assurance measure that is important at every step of the development process.
• Businesses that prioritise testing and make it a key part of their software development strategy have the capability to monitor the quality of their software throughout the development life cycle.
• All team members involved in a development project should be privy to testing procedures. This means that testers should be involved in decision making surrounding product development. Open and fluid communication between testers and other teams associated with the software development is a key part of effective testing. Acquiring full information about a project will help testers make informed decisions in how to formulate the most appropriate test approach and strategy.
• An important step that businesses can take to create a testing culture within their organisation is to interact with the end user. Involving the customer will help identify what gains can be made in the software development process and set the goals of performing the tests. Software testing is carried out for the benefit of both the end user and business objectives.

2. Test Planning

Preparation helps prevent poor execution. A test plan is the playbook for all testing activities necessary to assure the quality of your project and also your communication point with stakeholders and project personnel. In order for a test plan to be effective, it needs to be continuously and proactively updated to account for and address evolving project scope and requirement changes. The test plan should be updated to reflect these amendments with clear expectations to deliver goals and outcomes.

So what should be included in your Test Plan?

• Test Approach – The critical part of your test plan is the approach which answers the WHAT, WHY, HOW, WHO and WHEN you will be testing
• Test Estimation – Understand the components and the features to be tested. (setting up a test data, test cases, reporting and reviews should be included)
• Testing Scope – The kind of tests which should be delivered (i.e. performance testing, cross browser/mobility, security testing)
• Test Execution Process – The way you will manage and execute test cases (alignment to schedule) and process of capturing results, observations including raising failures and re-testing. see figure 1a below for an example test execution process automated using a testing platform (i.e. Vansah Test Management or similar)
• Resourcing – Allocating the right resources to support the testing process.
• Remediation Defect Cycle – The application will require necessary time to fix specific issues which may impact your testing cycles.

3. Enhancing Testing Efficiency and Effectiveness

Let’s understand what testing efficiency is. Testing efficiency is measured by understanding the average number of tests each resource or your team can execute per hour/day. The sooner you discover issues the better it is on your product development costs and time. This is why its important to discover how to test continuously and often against changes and across environments. Test automation is a capability to support your continuous testing to significantly improve your testing efficiency if implemented correctly.

Testing effectiveness is the rate at which your testing reveals issues before releasing your product to production and your end users.  It is not only important to run tests but equally important to know what type of tests you are running to support your testing process. see figure 2a below for an example real time dashboard to monitor your testing efficiency and effectiveness.

Testing is a crucial element of project management. Businesses that execute successful testing projects drive a testing culture, understand the value and impact of testing. Whether you are a small enterprise or a large organisation implementing a large project development Testpoint can help you achieve your business objectives with an array of testing strategies and solutions to assure your technology.