Deep Dive: Testing strategy

This is one of our Deep Dive seminars.

Unfortunately, on most projects, the test strategy is either forgotten or written just to check a box and reassure the client or manager. Yet it’s one of the key artifacts that define exactly how quality will be assured and controlled on this particular project, within its known constraints, risks, and circumstances. The formal development methodologies, now out of favor, worked out detailed templates for a test strategy, but with the arrival of Agile, many people simply forgot about this artifact, and most don’t even know it exists or have never seen one in real life.

In this seminar, we’ll go through the following topics in detail:

• Why you need a test strategy and why it’s important to define it as early as possible
• Quality drivers and the influence of the business domain and other factors
• Defining the level of quality a given product needs
• Functional requirements and the quality of their implementation
• Acceptance criteria and how they relate to testing
• Non-functional requirements and making sure they are met
• The split between manual and automated testing
• The approach, practices, and tools for manual testing
• Defect management: tools and approaches
• Metrics for assessing quality and the success of manual testing
• Distributing automated tests across levels
• Choosing test automation tools for different levels
• Metrics for assessing the success of test automation
• Managing test environments
• Working with test data
• Key roles and how testing and quality assurance responsibilities are divided within the team
• Integrating testing activities into the development process and CI/CD
• Main risks and constraints
• The need to train and hire people

By the end, participants should have a clear idea of what a test strategy is, the main points it covers, and the approaches that will make it succeed in practice.