Task: Organise The Management (MTP)
Purpose
Laying down the manner in which the management of the test process, infrastructure, test products, and defects is organised. This can be achieved both by defining central standards for management and the central management of certain aspects. Both options aim to prevent reinventing the wheel in the separate test levels.
Relationships
RolesPrimary: Additional: Assisting:
Outputs
Main Description

Method of operation

The method consists of the following sub-activities:

  1. Defining test process management
  2. Defining infrastructure management
  3. Defining test product management
  4. Defining the defects procedure.

At the master test plan level, standards can be defined for the separate test levels, supported by procedures, templates and tools (test management, planning and progress monitoring tools). Because this is virtually the same as when done at the level of test levels, we refer to section Organise The Management (AST) for a description of these sub-activities. This section only discusses the specific parts of setting up overall management.

In addition to the efficiency benefits, i.e. that the management procedures only have to be set up once and management tools can be shared between test levels, overall management has another big advantage: management uniformity results in improved control of the separate test levels by the test manager, in particular in the case of outsourcing or external party testing.

Good management is also necessary when the test manager bears responsibility for the traceability of all tests: can it be demonstrated that everything that
needs to be tested has actually been tested?

Products

A description of the above-mentioned management processes, laid down in the master test plan.

Tools

  • Testware management tool
  • Defect management tool
  • Workflow tool
  • Planning and progress monitoring tool.
Steps
1. Defining test process management

Test process management focuses on managing the test process in terms of progress and quality and providing insight into the quality of the test object. To this end, the following data must be identified, registered, administrated, stored and interpreted:

  • Progress and use of budget and time
  • Quality indicators
  • Test statistics.

This information represents the basis for control and reporting by the test manager. The test manager of each test level is responsible for managing his own test process. The overall test manager ensures that this is done correctly. To this end, the test manager checks, randomly if necessary, the separate test levels (or orders checks) both for progress and quality of the test process. The latter can be achieved by e.g. asking the method test expert to check the traceability from test basis to test scripts to test results. The enforcement of instructions, approach and procedures can also be verified. If required, a separate report can be made on this aspect.

The progress data are derived from the data and reports of the individual test levels and by recording the data on the overall activities and products. Maintaining the same types of data for all test levels is therefore vital to the creation of overall statistics.

2. Defining infrastructure management

It is often useful to organise infrastructure management centrally, across the test levels.

In addition to the general management tasks described in Organise The Management (AST), such as backup and recovery, availability, version management and maintenance, the following tasks are specific to central management:

  • Managing an environment and/or test tools shared by test levels
  • Aligning the separate infrastructure planning schedules
  • Acting as an intermediary between suppliers (system management department or the central test organisation) and clients (test levels) of the infrastructure. Central management can, for instance, define the delivery procedure.
3. Defining test product management
At the master test plan level, standards are defined for managing the test products of the separate test levels, supported by procedures, templates and tools. This facilitates the reusability of the products and communication on this subject. Sometimes, it is decided to handle this management centrally as well. We recommend using the standards for documentation and configuration management generally applicable within the system development process.
4. Defining the defects procedure
Because a defects procedure applies to the entire project and not to a separate test level, this procedure is best defined at the master test plan level instead of per separate test level. This also makes it possible to detect trends crossing the boundaries of test levels. Please refer to Defects Management for a description of the defects procedure.
More Information
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