Scope of This Book and Who Will Find It Useful

This book is a field guide aimed squarely at testers and management involved with developing software systems and applications. It contains practical solutions, not theory. Theory and background are presented only to support the practical solutions.

This is a tester's survival guide because it helps testers supply answers that management understands and respects. Testers need to answer the question, "Why can't you have it tested by next week?" This work is also a manager's survival guide because managers have to explain why things are the way they are, how much it's going to cost, and why.

The methods presented here were developed in large networks. Often these networks are running a combination of Web-based and client/server-based applications, some on the public Internet and some running privately behind the firewall. These systems are generally written at least in part using object-oriented languages, and all are accessed using graphical user interfaces, be they dedicated clients or Web pages running in a browser. These test methods have been used to test a rich variety of other software systems as well, including telecommunications, business applications, embedded firmware, and game software.

The process described in this book is a top-down approach to testing. These methods can be used to test at the unit level, but they are more useful in integration, system, and end-to-end test efforts. These test methods are often used later in the project life cycle, in load testing, performance testing, and production system monitoring. Opportunities for automation or test reuse are noted as appropriate.

Last, this is not an all-or-none test guide. A process improvement can result from implementing parts of these methods, like adding a metric to test tracking, or prioritizing tests and keeping track of how long each one takes to run.