Effective Software Testing: 50 Specific Ways To Improve Your Testing

"Effective Software Testing" explores fifty critically important best practices, pitfalls, and solutions. Gleaned from the author's extensive practical experience, these concrete items will enable quality assurance professionals and test managers to immediately enhance their understanding and skills, avoid costly mistakes, and implement a state-of-the-art testing program.

This book places special emphasis on the integration of testing into all phases of the software development life cycle--from requirements definition to design and final coding. The fifty lessons provided here focus on the key aspects of software testing: test planning, design, documentation, execution, managing the testing team, unit testing, automated testing, nonfunctional testing, and more.

You will learn to: Base testing efforts on a prioritized feature scheduleEstimate test preparation and executionDefine the testing team roles and responsibilitiesDesign test procedures as soon as requirements are availableDerive effective test cases from requirementsAvoid constraints and detailed data elements in test proceduresMake unit-test execution part of the build processUse logging to increase system testabilityTest automated test tools on an application prototypeAutomate regression tests whenever possibleAvoid sole reliance on capture/playbackConduct performance testing with production-sized databasesTailor usability tests to the intended audienceIsolate the test environment from the development environmentImplement a defect tracking life cycle

Throughout the book, numerous real-world case studies and concrete examples illustrate the successful application of these important principles andtechniques.

"Effective Software Testing" provides ready access to the expertise and advice of one of the world's foremost software quality and testing authorities.
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-- Easily digestible lessons for software testers, gleaned from the author's years of valuable experience.

-- Helps testers avoid making costly mistakes and oversights that can delay -- or even derail -- a project.

-- Timely With the advent of agile methodologies, testing is becoming the responsibility of more and more team members.

The knowledge of what constitutes a successful, end-to-end software testing effort is typically gained through experience. In this new book, noted testing expert Elfriede Dustin imparts the best of her collected wisdom. She presents fifty specific tips for a better testing program. These fifty tips are divided into ten sections, and presented so as to mirror the chronology of a software project. Using this book as a guide and reference, quality assurance professionals will be better able to insure the quality of their next application. While testing has historically been viewed as an afterthought in the grand scheme of software engineering, the success of an application, and possibly an organization, can rest on the shoulders of the testing team. That's because the testing program functions as the final "quality gate" for an application. Testing allows or denies the transition of an application into the market. There are a multitude of seemingly minor tasks that must be performed and managed by the testing team.