Test Management

Test Management is nothing but managing the affairs of Software testing. It ensures that the testing is is done effectively and efficiently for software projects. Testing is usually accounts for a substantial section part of the overall project budget. Therefore, it is very much important that the Testing activity should be managed in a systematic way.It includes different aspects. We will go through them 

Test Management includes:

• Test Organisation and Independence
• Test Planning and Estimation
• Test Progress Monitoring and Control
• Configuration Management
• Risk management 
• Incident Management

Test Organisation and Independence:

The approach in order to organize a test team depends upon the organisational structure of an organisation. how they plan to organize a team and all. Generally any organization needs to create an environment where testers can conduct testing and deliver an independent, objective in assessment of the quality of SUT or AUT.

Test Planning and Estimation:

In this scenario  we are going to plan how much effort we are going to keep for the testing but we are not going to write the Test plan . It asses the software risk and then it develops a plan accordingly to determine if the software might reduce or minimize those risks. The goal of the Test plan is It guides us in the testing activity and helps us to confront challenges associated with the testing. It serves a s medium for us to communicate with the other members and helps to manage changes.

Entry Criteria:

Entry Criteria defines when to start the testing such as at the beginning of the test level or when set of tests are ready for the execution

Exit Criteria:

Exit Criteria defines when to stop testing such as at the end of the test level or when a set of tests have been achieved their goal.

Test Progress Monitoring and Control:

Test Monitoring and Test Control is basically a management activity. Test monitoring is a process of evaluating and providing feedback of the “currently in progress” testing phase and Test control is an activity of guiding and taking corrective action based on some metrics or information to improve the efficiency and quality. Test monitoring and control goes hand in hand. Being primarily a manager’s activity, a Test Analyst contributes towards this activity by gathering and calculating the metrics which will be eventually used for monitoring and control.

Test monitoring activity includes:

• Providing feed back to the team and the other required stakeholders about the progress of the testing efforts.
• Broadcasting the results of testing to associated members.
• Finding and tracking the test metrics.  
• Planning and estimation and deciding the future course of action based on the metrics calculated.
• Test coverage metric
• Test execution metrics (Number of test cases pass, fail, blocked, on hold)
• Defect metrics
• Requirement traceability metrics
• Miscellaneous metrics like level of confidence of testers, dates milestones, cost, schedule and turnaround time.

Test control activity include:

• Prioritizing the testing efforts
• Revisiting the test schedules and dates
• Reorganizing the test environment
• Re prioritizing the test cases / conditions

Configuration Management:

Configuration management involves in focusing on establishing and maintaining consistency of one system’s performance, functional and physical attributes with its requirements throughout its life time. It controls the changes by identifying the work Products that are likely to establish change, establish relationships among them. It is the management of security features and assurances like through the control of changes that are made to hardware, software, firmware, documentation, test fixtures throughout the information system’s life cycle.It also verifies the completeness and correctness of the configuration items.

Risk Management:

Risk management is a critical activity in software test planning and tracking. It includes the identification, prioritization/ analysis and treatment fo risks faced by the business. Risk management is performed at various levels like project level, product level organization level and even national or international level. Risk management provide a disciplined approach to assess  what can go wrong and  what can go safe. To determine what risks are important to deal with and also implement actions to deal with those risks. Identify new risks with the help of testing.

Incident Management:

An incident is any unplanned event occurring that requires further investigation. Incidents can be raised at any time throughout the software development life cycle, from reviews of the test basis (requirements, specifications, etc.) to test specification and test execution. 

Incident management, according to IEEE 1044 is ‘The process of recognizing, investigating, taking action and disclosing of incidents.’ It involves recording incidents, classifying them and identifying the impact of those incidents. The process of incident management ensures that incidents are tracked from recognition to correction, and finally through retest and closure. It is important that organizations document their incident management process and ensure they have appointed someone (often called an incident manager/coordinator) to manage or identify  the process.