Share via

Happy About Global Software Test Automation

  • Article

A software testing book with a quote from Steve Wozniak on the cover?  From the quote it doesn't sound like Steve's happy with the quality of code that he's coming in contact with.  I can sympathize.  Maybe I've got my own high bar for quality but I don't think I've come upon any software product that I consider truly excellent.  So, how can we as an industry get better?  Does this book give us real help or clues on how to do so?

The books subtitle is "A Discussion of Software Testing for Executives" and I think it's apt.  The book is a quick read and doesn't drill down into details.  But it does provide a high level model for thinking about what good software testing looks like and attempts to integrate three aspects of it.  Those three aspects are manual testing, automated testing, and global outsourcing.

The book starts off with an overview of software testing.  Since the intended audience is executives, the overview considers software testing in the context of the business.  This is a different approach from many testing books and that makes it valuable.  I think the content of the overview is accurate and would help an executive understand more about software testing issues.

 The book then spends three chapters talking about the pitfalls of manual testing, automated testing, and outsourcing/offshoring respectively.  Each chapter also talks about suggestions for improving that particular area of software testing.

The book follows up with it's recommendations for strategy and tactics of the model they call Global Test Automation.  The seven steps recommended by the model include:

1. Assess your testing needs
2. Align your testing process
3. Leverage automation
4. Minimize costs and risks of global resources.
5. Select the right tools.
6. Secure/develop competency.
7. Measure, set goals, optimize.

The book concludes with 10 top executive take-aways.

I liked the book.  It was a quick read and hit on most of the issues that I have seen in real world software testing efforts.  It makes some points about software testing that executive sponsors should understand and recommends an approach that makes sense to me.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2007
    I was looking at the statistics on some of my recent posts and I found that my post on the book "Happy