Summary

In this chapter, I walked you through the process of implementing an automated test inventory complete with test totals and a sizing worksheet. I showed you how I use this information to construct a test sizing worksheet that I use to negotiate the particulars of the test effort.

Using the sizing worksheet, testers and managers are in a position to make well-informed decisions about trade-offs between test coverage and test resources. It is an enormous aid in budget negotiations because I can change the rank of test numbers and environment numbers and see the effect immediately, then show the effect to management.

In the last chapter, we discussed how to establish the risk criteria and ranking index for the items on your inventory from the high level. In this chapter, I showed you how I use that analysis to focus my test efforts on the most important areas. I discussed the criteria that I use to pick the right tests to fulfill my estimated test coverage and provide an adequate effort.

There are many types of tests in the inventory. In the next three chapters, we discuss path and data analysis techniques that will help you quickly identify the most important tests for your test scripts.