Testing strategy

This artical comes from http://www.thoughtworks.com/consulting/testing-strategy. THe company "thoughtworks" is an amazing companyhas leadership in software technology all over the world i think. The below is the main content of Test Strategy.

Refocus your view of testing

Building quality software means bringing QA processes into the entire project, right from the start, rather than trying to test the bugs out after the code is built. But getting testing right is important not only to achieve a high quality result, but because it makes the entire development process more productive.

ThoughtWorks Test strategy specialists help IT organizations get full value from testing. We plan and implement measurable improvements tailored to your specific software delivery capabilities and priorities, using advanced testing processes and tools. We help improve the effectiveness of testing, and realign the function to be a fully integrated part of the software development process.

Repositioning testing at the heart of your software development approach builds in quality and creates value by:

• Aligning testing priorities with business goals
• Testing business process, not just the code, at every step
• Detecting problems early, lowering risk and giving the business more options for resolution
• Defining test cases before coding, when they help prevent errors rather than just detecting them
• Making better business decisions possible by test feedback during development itself, when the cost of change is lower, and the code is most adaptable
• Radically reducing post-development testing time and costs, bringing the entire project to market sooner.

A tailored approach, with a long-term commitment

We work with you, flexibly, to implement changes. We can lead and staff the entire change process, or act as coaches to your people. Different approaches suit individual clients and so the right mix for you may include training, coaching, co-sourcing, automation and tools introduction, presentations or a combination of these.

Our aim is not to merely bring in tools, teach a few classes and call it a day. We aim to broadly and sustainably embed the new approach, working with pilot teams and projects. We bring the focus to building quality into the application, and create an understanding that testing is everyone’s responsibility, leaving you with a culture of continuous improvement.

Here is another one:

Essential Feedback Loop

Many software development organizations treat testing as a mere checkpoint to be passed before taking the product live. Months of this kind of "testing" add no value to the product and the product can quickly become out-of-date. Instead of testing at the end of the development process, we integrate testing thoroughly into software development and systems management. Our own experience shows that when supported with the right processes, tools and training, integrated testing speeds up the overall delivery of software significantly. Repositioning testing at the heart of software development not only builds in quality but also creates value by striving to prevent defects before they occur, enabling developers to get feedback in minutes and regression test results in hours, and allows business to adopt testing activities which are highly aligned with their goals.

We often pair testers with developers, which obviously leads to an increased coding knowledge, and so the development of more maintainable automated suites. On the other hand, they can portion out their exuberant testing skills with developers. On pairing with an analyst, this type of mutual knowledge sharing continues and builds really close-knit and highly performing teams. Working closely with customers helps the test team to ask right questions and come up with the right acceptance criteria and makes sure that our customers get full visibility of the product being developed.

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