Proactive Testing Puts Agile Test-Driven (and Other) Development on Steroids (Elective)

This course covers the Elective area of the Certified Test Manager (CTM) certification, Certified Software Test Professional certification and the CSTAS certification.

For costs and cities where this course might be offered, please see the right border of this page or to bring this course to your test team at your location, contact our Education and Professionals Services Group.

Concepts

The traditional testing process is reactive, struggling uphill after all the possible errors have been made.  Agile test-driven development writes tests prior to code, continually reviews code through pair programming, and emphasizes  frequent “acceptance” (integration) testing of small code implementations—all of which help produce cleaner program code quicker.   As much of an improvement as it is, agile test-driven development could do even better by also applying concepts and techniques of the powerful Proactive Testing™ process that identify numerous test conditions which traditional and test-driven approaches ordinarily overlook, including up to two-thirds of showstoppers and much of the extensive rework which terms like “refactoring” tend to obscure.  Following the CAT-Scan Approach™, this interactive workshop describes a Proactive Testing™ model and methods that enable agile (and other) development to deliver far better systems even quicker and cheaper, while also helping overcome traditional user, manager, and developer resistance to testing.  Exercises enhance learning.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:  This course has been designed for testing professionals and others who manage and perform testing of software products, and also for analysts, designers, developers, involved business people, and system/project managers who need to know how Proactive Testing™ can cut software development time and effort.

Participants will learn:

• Test-related advantages of agile test-driven development, and its seldom-recognized limitations
• A truly agile structured Proactive Testing process that actually can deliver better quality while cutting time, effort, and aggravation for users, developers, and managers
• Testing’s role in getting more accurate, complete, and testable REAL requirements
• Low-overhead test planning/design techniques that spot and prevent ordinarily-overlooked defects
• Proactive Integration and User Acceptance Test strategies that agile testing misses.

Outline

• AGILE ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS
  • Rationale for agile avoiding overhead
  • The Agile Manifesto
  • eXtreme Programming characteristics
  • User story requirements
  • Pair programming continuous code review
  • Test-driven test-first development
  • Agile “acceptance testing”
  • Refactoring as an expected practice
  • Factors limiting Agile’s actual effectiveness
• PROACTIVE TESTING™ OVERVIEW
  • Earlier is cheaper, defect economics
  • Need for metrics on frequency and impact
  • Developer perceptions vs. actual results
  • CAT-Scan ApproachÔ to find more errors
  • V-model and objectives of each test level
  • Dynamic, passive and active static testing
  • Proactive testing—out of time, but not tests
  • Proactive Testing Life Cycle model
  • REAL, business requirements provide value
  • Product/system/software requirements
  • Conventional UAT misconceptions
  • Test activities that save the developer’s time
• TEST PLANNING VALUE NOT BUSYWORK
  • Risk elements, impact and likelihood
  • Reactive approach tests higher risks more
  • Proactive Testing™ tests risks earlier too
  • Identifying commonly-overlooked risks
  • IEEE Standard for Test Documentation
  • Master and Detailed Test Plans
  • Stomach ache metric, prevent showstoppers
  • Letting testing drive development
• DETAILED TEST PLANNING/DESIGN
  • Graphical technique to simplify integrations
  • Integration test plans prevent schedule slips
  • Black Box functional testing
  • Functionality Matrix identifies test designs
  • White Box structural testing
  • Structural testing of use cases
  • Identifying overlooked scenarios, conditions
  • Developing reusable test designs
  • Structured brainstorming
  • Checklists and guidelines to fill the gaps
  • Formal/informal test design specifications
  • Selecting scaled subset based on risk
  • Proactive Testing™ puts Agile on steroids