| Main Description |
Figure 1: Sample organisation chart in which a Test Expertise Centre (TEC) acts as the control centre for setting
up and maintaining test environments.
This figure shows an example of an organisation chart containing a Test Expertise Centre (TEC) as described in
section Two Common Types Of Test Organisation. The TEC has a department called “environments
and tools”. That department fulfils the control centre function for setting up and maintaining test environments. The
test environment suppliers consist of many parties. In ‘maintenance’, for instance, there is an infrastructure
department. It is organised according to the two types of hardware configuration they are maintaining (PC and
mainframe). For the test environments, they are responsible for supplying the hardware, network components, operating
systems, etc. There are also two maintenance services departments within maintenance: security and databases. The first
handles requests for the various authorisations at the logical level for the systems in use. The other, databases, is
responsible for maintaining the various databases. Finally, there is the functional maintenance which maintains the
software. When project X or Y wants a test environment, it must contact a number of parties (all of them in the worst
case scenario). They are therefore the TEC’s clients.
|
