ACT 2 LEAD
ACT 2 LEAD
Software Testing Leadership Handbook
About the Book
This book is written for anyone who wants to understand what testing and testing leadership are all about. A better understanding will help to lead and improve your testing - whether testing is outsourced or in-house. CEO, CIO, or CTO - this is the testing book for you, too! It's also for anyone who works with software: product owners, project managers, system analysts, developers, testers, test managers, and many others, including students.
The book is written as individual questions so that it can be read chapter by chapter and in any order. We have chosen the questions based on our 50-year experience. The book is not full of truths, as there are many opinions. Instead, we share our knowledge and thinking on testing and its leadership - to get you to think about those, too! There are over 30 questions, tens of case examples, and 20 ideas to improve your testing practices.
The book reminds us that the leadership must be active and lead testing even, or especially, if testing is outsourced. We have created ACT 2 LEAD mnemonic to help you with that. Read the book and learn what it means in practice!
Remember to ask questions and challenge everything you read, including this sentence - as a good tester should always do.
About the Authors
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements 1. Foreword
- 2. How did Marko become a leader in testing?
- 3. How did Kari become a leader in testing?
- 4. What does testing mean?
- 5. What is test leadership?
- 5.1 Organizational test leadership
- 5.2 Operational level test leadership
- 5.2 ACT 2 LEAD heuristic
- 6. What does quality mean?
- 7. What does defect, i.e., bug mean?
- 8. What does quality assurance mean?
- 9. What does quality assistance mean?
- 10. How do you get a grip on test terms?
- 11. When does testing start?
- 12. How long does testing take?
- 13. What is the best way to test?
- 14. What are the differences between the product and the information system world?
- 14.1 Product world
- 14.2 Information system world
- 15. Testing in different software development models
- 15.1 Testing in the waterfall development model
- 15.2 Testing in the agile development model
- 16. How does testing relate to other software development activities?
- 16.1 Requirement management
- 16.2 Design
- 16.3 Programming
- 16.4 Test environment maintenance
- 16.5 Testing
- 16.6 Operations
- 16.7 Leading the work
- 17. Who is involved in testing?
- 17.1 Leadership
- 17.2 Developers
- 17.3 Testing professionals
- 17.4 Testing specialists
- 17.5 Business
- 17.6 Operations
- 17.7 Users
- 18. How to recruit testers?
- 19. What organizational testing capabilities are needed?
- 19.1 Quality culture
- 19.2 Budget
- 19.3 People
- 19.4 Competencies and skills
- 19.5 Process, way of working
- 19.6 Methods
- 19.7 Tools
- 20. How to organize testing?
- 20.1 Testing as a part of a product team
- 20.2 Testing as a part of a component team
- 20.3 Testing as a separate testing team
- 20.4 Testing as a temporary team
- 20.5 Testing as a centralized testing team
- 21. How to test in different situations?
- 21.1 Testing of commercial-off-the-shelf software
- 21.2 Performing user acceptance testing only
- 21.3 Subcontracting testing
- 21.4 Leading subcontracted testing
- 21.5 Test and lead testing
- 22. What is test planning?
- 22.1 Strategic level test planning
- 22.2 Contractual level test planning
- 22.3 Operational level test planning
- 23. How to make testing diverse enough?
- 24. What kind of test types are there?
- 24.1 Code review
- 24.2 Static code analysis
- 24.3 Software composition analysis
- 24.4 Unit testing
- 24.5 API testing
- 24.6 Integration testing
- 24.7 Reviews
- 24.8 Functional testing
- 24.9 Acceptance testing of the user story
- 24.10 User acceptance testing
- 24.11 Alpha and beta testing
- 24.12 A/B-testing
- 24.13 Testing and monitoring in production
- 24.14 Usability testing
- 24.15 Accessibility testing
- 24.16 Performance testing
- 24.17 Security testing
- 24.18 Browser and device testing
- 24.19 Other test types
- 25. What kind of test approaches are there?
- 25.1 Test case based testing
- 25.2 Exploratory testing
- 25.3 Session-based test management
- 25.4 Test automation
- 25.5 Risk-based testing
- 25.6 Pair testing
- 25.7 Bug bash
- 25.8 Regression testing
- 25.9 Whole team approach to testing
- 25.10 Acceptance test-driven development
- 25.11 Test-driven development
- 25.12 Power of three
- 26. How to identify what to improve in testing?
- 26.1 Retrospectives
- 26.2 Self-assessment
- 26.3 Expert opinion
- 26.4 Maturity assessment models
- 26.5 Blameless post mortems
- 26.6 Task force
- 26.7 Through working together
- 26.8 Test strategy
- 26.9 Feedback
- 26.10 Continuous improvement
- 27. How to improve and speed up testing?
- 27.1 Improve testability
- 27.2 Reduce the number of test cases
- 27.3 Increase test automation
- 27.4 Resource more testers
- 27.5 Prevent defects
- 27.6 Test earlier and more often
- 27.7 Simplify the product
- 27.8 Improve code quality
- 27.9 Clarify requirements
- 27.10 Reduce technical debt
- 27.11 Improve test environments
- 27.12 Improve test data management
- 27.13 Reorganize teams
- 27.14 Reduce the amount of testing
- 27.15 Improve deployment strategy
- 27.16 Reduce parallel work
- 27.17 Improve the software development process
- 27.18 Improve defect management
- 27.19 Shorten release cycles
- 27.20 Improve communication
- 28. How to develop testing competencies?
- 28.1 Trainings
- 28.2 Internal testing community
- 28.3 Study groups
- 28.4 Library
- 28.5 Coaching and mentoring
- 28.6 Social media
- 29. What kind of testing metrics are there?
- 29.1 Metrics related to the test process
- 29.2 Metrics related to the software under test and its quality
- 30. What does test coverage mean?
- 30.1 Code coverage
- 30.2 Requirement coverage
- 30.3 Other test coverage models
- 31. What kind of testing tools are there?
- 31.1 Testing tools
- 31.2 What to consider when selecting test tools?
- 32. What is test automation?
- 32.1 What does test automation do?
- 32.2 What does test automation affect?
- 32.3 What are the goals of test automation?
- 32.4 How to automate testing?
- 32.5 How developers benefit from test automation?
- 32.6 How to select a test automation tool?
- 32.7 How to fail in test automation?
- 33. How to identify a good test?
- 34. How to manage test data?
- 34.1 Use production data
- 34.2 Pseudonymization of the production data
- 34.3 Anonymization of the production data
- 34.4 Synthetic data
- 35. Epilogue
- 35. Where did we get the answers to the questions in this book?
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