From verification list to test factory: a step by step approach

Speaker:
Hilde Grommen, Senior test consultant of Quasus (Belgium)

Three years ago a midsized company decided to in source their IT activities in order to respond quicker to business demands. During this change, no budget was put aside for testing. This resulted in a lot of problems during the first releases. The initial countermeasure for this was the creation of an exhaustive list of verifications for each release. This presentation explains the 1.5 year step by step implementation process starting from this verification list in Microsoft Excel and ending in an independent test factory. Over the course of several projects the test factory has been gradually expanded and continuously improved. Risk assessment of not testing functional and/or non-functional requirements is an important part of this process. Visualization of this risk together with time and budget constraints has been a key item in the test factory decision making process. The presentation will introduce several ideas and best practices for building and maintaining a test factory from scratch, covering following topics:

• Where to find a well balanced test team?
• Which test strategy to use?
• Which software tool can support the strategy?
• How to convince management to invest in quality?