Test Management Process: A Complete Guide for Testing Project

You become a Test Manager of the most important project in your company. The project task is to test the net banking facility of the esteemed “Guru99 Bank”

Everything seems to be great. Your boss trusts you. He counts on you. You have a good chance to prove yourself in your task. But the truth is:

Test Management is not just a single activity. It consists of a series of activities

Test Management Phases

This topic briefly introduces Test Management Process and shows you an overview of Test Management Phases. You will learn more details about each Test Management Phases in the next articles.

Test Management Process

There are two main Parts of Test Management Process: -

• Planning
  1. Risk Analysis
  2. Test Estimation
  3. Test Planning
  4. Test Organization
• Execution
  1. Test Monitoring and Control
  2. Issue Management
  3. Test Report and Evaluation

Planning

Risk Analysis and Solution

Risk is the potential loss (an undesirable outcome, however not necessarily so) resulting from a given action or an activity.

Risk Analysis is the first step which Test Manager should consider before starting any project. Because all projects may contain risks, early risk detection and identification of its solution will help Test Manager to avoid  potential loss in the future & save on project cost.

You will learn more detail about the Risk Analysis and Solution in here.

Test Estimation

An estimate is a forecast or prediction. Test Estimation is approximately determining how long a task would take to complete. Estimating effort for the test is one of the major and important tasks in Test Management.

Benefits of correct estimation:

1. Accurate test estimates lead to better planning, execution and monitoring of tasks under a test manager's attention.
2. Allow for more accurate scheduling and help realize results more confidently.

You will learn more details about the Test Estimation and metrics in here.

Test Planning

A Test Plan can be defined as a document describing the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended Testing activities.

A project may fail without a complete Test Plan. Test planning is particularly important in large software system development.

In software testing, a test plan gives detailed testing information regarding an upcoming testing effort, including:

• Test Strategy
• Test Objective
• Exit /Suspension Criteria
• Resource Planning
• Test Deliverables

You will learn more detail about the Test Planning in this article.

Test Organization

Now you have a Plan, but how will you stick to the plan and execute it? To answer that question, you have Test Organization phase.

Generally speaking, you need to organize an effective Testing Team. You have to assemble a skilled team to run the ever-growing testing engine effectively.

Do you need to know more about the Test Organization? Why are self-organized teams so important? Click here  for detail.

Execution

Test Monitoring and Control

What will you do when your project runs out of resource or exceeds the time schedule? You need to Monitor and Control Test activities to bring it back on schedule.

Test Monitoring and Control is the process of overseeing all the metrics necessary to ensure that the project is running well, on schedule, and not out of budget.

Monitoring

Monitoring is a process of collecting, recording, and reporting information about the project activity that the project manager and stakeholder needs to know

To Monitor, Test Manager does following activities

• Define the project goal, or project performance standard
• Observe the project performance, and compare between the actual and the planned performance expectations
• Record and report any detected problem which happens to the project

Controlling

Project Controlling is a process of using data from monitoring activity to bring actual performance to planned performance.

In this step, the Test Manager takes action to correct the deviations from the plan. In some cases, the plan has to be adjusted according to project situation.

Issue Management

As mentioned in the beginning of the topics, all projects may have potential risk. When the risk happens, it becomes an issue. 

In the life cycle of any project, there will be always an unexpected problems and questions that crop up. For an example:

• The company cuts down your project budget
• Your project team lacks the skills to complete project
• The project schedule is too tight for your team to finish the project at the deadline.

Risk to be avoided while testing:

• Missing the deadline
• Exceed the project budget
• Lose the customer trust

When these issues arise, you have to be ready to deal with them – or they can potentially affect the project's outcome.

How do you deal with the issues? What is the issue management? Find the answer in the this article

Test Report & Evaluation

The project has already completed. It’s now time for look back what you have done.

The purpose of the Test Evaluation Reports is:

“Test Evaluation Report” describes the results of the Testing in terms of Test coverage and exit criteria. The data used in Test Evaluation are based on the test results data and test result summary.