COURSE 3100 | 2-DAY PUBLIC SESSION | 3-DAY VIRTUAL SESSION
Planning Effective Software Testing

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Proven techniques for planning, estimating and managing your software test plans to ensure your testing is done more effectively and within available time, budget and resources

Learn how to:

• Produce better software products by truly understanding the entire test planning process and its critical effect on product success or failure
  
• Identify all the different types of tests required to produce a marketworthy "Gold" release
  
• Identify test cases and plan for their timely development and execution
  
• Quickly obtain organizational commitment to your test plan
  
• Use a thorough and powerful traceability matrix to guarantee the comprehensiveness of your testing
  
• Accomplish risk planning and management for fail-safe testing activities
  
• Track and manage the testing effort and take corrective action to avoid costly human or technical errors
  
• Capture relevant stakeholder buy-in for your testing effort to eliminate delays, surprises, and unintended consequences
  
• Integrate your test plans with other project plans to guarantee their relevance and effectiveness
  

Test Planning is Not Just Creating Test Cases
A complete test plan has the same sorts of information as any other good plan. It defines what will be done and what will not. It also estimates resources that will be required, as well as a schedule of activities. It establishes a basis for managing the testing activities, reporting status and mitigating testing risks. If your test plans are incomplete, then you have likely experienced the pain that comes from poorly planned testing:

• Not enough time to generate all the test cases and test data
  
• Resources that are needed but not available
  
• A constant flow of surprises and unexpected events
  
• Disagreement over what is to be done and what is to be left undone
  
• Little basis for understanding or reporting status.
  
  

Proven Processes That Will Help You Immediately
This course will teach you how to do a complete job of planning your test activities. It will walk you through the test planning process, identify all of the inputs you will need and the things you should produce. It will give you guidance on how to plan for test case creation, defect tracking, status monitoring and progress reporting. This course will equip you with all the tools you need to create a test plan that will serve all your needs.

Dynamic, 2-Day Workshop In-Class Group Exercises:
In-class exercises help you identify and examine firsthand problems you may be experiencing. Through group effort, you and your peers will examine ways your department or company should be handling problems up front and how you can improve on your current procedures.

Specifically, you will engage in:

• Open discussion about how the concepts will work in your organization
  
• Building a traceability matrix
  
• Using the traceability matrix to assure test completeness
  
• Estimating the optimum sizes of sample test cases
  
• Reviewing sample test plans for adherence to the principles you will learn
  

These Key Benefits Will Be Immediately Useful:

1. Objectively identify when testing is complete so you can eliminate ambiguity and disagreements
   
2. Clearly describe the importance and role of the Test Plan so other stakeholders embrace it as important
   
3. Understand how to list the content of a complete Test Plan so you never miss any important components
   
4. Obtain key facts & data you need for accurate Test Planning
   
5. Identify necessary testing-related activities so everyone understands exactly what needs to be done
   
6. Use a requirements-to-test traceability matrix to assure nothing has been overlooked
   
7. Prioritize testing-related activities so tradeoffs can be done with confidence
   
8. Estimate resources required for testing—be assured that you have what you need, when you need it
   
9. Define a comprehensive testing calendar
   
10. Identify, track, and manage risks to your testing effort
    
11. Assure the completeness of your tests and eliminate surprises for your customers
    
12. Clearly determine the specific exit criteria for testing
    
13. Peer-review the Test Plan to guarantee quality and completeness
    
14. Obtain stakeholder concurrence with the Test Plan
    
15. Track and manage the testing process
    
16. Understand and communicate the scope of the testing effort
    
17. Identify success criteria for testing activities
    
18. Document testing scope and objectives
    
19. List the inputs to and outputs from test planning
    
20. Enumerate the test cases that are required to satisfy the objective of each test
    
21. Identify all of the resources that are required for test preparation and execution
    
22. Compute the effort, cost, budget and schedule for testing
    
23. Determine how testing activities will be managed, tracked and reported