Over the last few weeks I’ve been posting ideas on to effectively manage each discipline within a project using a combination of Agile and Unified Process techniques in order to optimize the ‘throughput’ of business ideas into high quality software. Today I’ll spend some time on the Testing discipline which ensures that a high quality solution is being provisioned.
Over the past five years, there has been increasing interest in agile development approaches to software development (such as eXtreme Programming), however, integrating these into a unified testing approach can be challenging given their rapid delivery model. Applying a testing framework to an agile development approach provides a greater opportunity to ensure a robust and high quality application. This paper reviews a web-services software development project completed at the end of the year 2000 for a large Fortune 500 company. The project used an object-oriented design and blended the more formal Rational Unified Process (RUP) with the low ceremony approached advocated by eXtreme Programming (XP). The application testing approach applied the unit test framework of XP with a formal testing methodology required by the client for this high profile project. The paper describes the process followed and key learnings discovered throughout the project lifecycle.
One reason so many software development projects fail is a poor testing framework to ensure what is developed will actually work in production. Developing a comprehensive test plan for a software development projects requires a specialized skill set but as a project manager you need to be able to ask the right questions before signing off. This article is part of a series that provides ten tough questions every project manager should ask when reviewing the testing components of a project plan.