#test strategy

My advice is to always think practically. It’s a good tip for most of nursing school. Ask yourself this question for EVERYTHING you learn “if I forget this, how likely is it that I’m going to hurt or kill someone else/myself??” If the answer is “not likely at all.” You can probably file it away in the back of your mind.

Example: how does penecillin work?? I think it breaks down cell walls, but I honestly forget. Will me forgetting hurt someone? No.

Another example: Incentive spirometry helps prevent atelectasis during and after hospitalization. Is that important? A bit, yeah. While Atelectasis in itself isn’t life threatening, it’s gonna give patients a feeling of shortness of breath, and is easily prevented. This warrants material you have to study.

Another example: Flumazenil is the antidote for benzodiazapine overdose, but ONLY give it if YOU overdosed the patient and they don’t take it at home; otherwise, just manage symptoms. If you have a chronic benzo user who overdoses, and you give them Flumazenil. Congrats! They’re seizing! Also, you can’t give them ativan (a benzo) to stop it. This is extremely important, and thus warrants prioritization in studying: if hearing its importance the first time didn’t scare you into remembering, which was usually the case for me.

Testing without any direction is the same as navigating without a map. It is disorganized, full of errors, weak outcomes, and fraught with risks. This is where test strategy comes into play, for the clarity of the pathway, robust structure of tests, and alignment of the project’s goals.

Have a read about how test planning could prove to be a game changer for your organizations.

What is a Test Strategy?

Any QA testing could be understood as a blueprint for telling how testing will be conducted throughout the project. It’s a high-level document, to provide clarity on the testing target, methodologies, resources, etc.

Having a good strategy for testing could ensure an improved alignment among your organization’s stakeholders and the project team. Following are the key components of the test strategy:

Objectives.

Scope of testing.

Testing methodologies (manual, automated, exploratory).

Resource allocation and tools.

Risk management.

Importance of a Test Strategy for Project Success

Instead of simply keeping it execution-focused, our focus must be on maintaining a holistic view of the entire outline of the testing process of the project. There’s a reason why good test planning could do wonders around. Here’s how:

Facilitates Risk ManagementBy figuring out possible risks at the early stages of the project, it becomes much easier to minimize the chances of critical defects reaching production.

Resource Utilization & Avoiding Team ConfusionWithout having a clear understanding of test planning, a couple of unfavorable tests could come up. For instance, two teams might accidentally go for testing the same functionality, or maybe the test cases might overlap with the manual and automated ones.QA Testing allocates the role of different teams even in testing and saves a lot of time and labor for similar tests.

Supports Scalability and AdaptabilityBy adapting to the changing environments for testing, organizations not only evolve from a technological perspective, but also better-know their requirements for quality tests, and their scalability.

Drives PredictabilityA good QA Testing decreases any sort of last-minute surprises. It could significantly also reduce and improve the overall testing practices of your organization by about 30% straight. You can confidently deliver your reliable product on schedule.

How to Create an Effective Test Strategy?

Given below is a step-by-step guide to working on effective & robust test planning for your organization:

Step-1: Define testing goals and scope:Clearly articulating the goals and scope could form a strong foundation for QA testing The goals measure the objectives, level of test coverage to be performed, validation of any critical functionalities, and regulating the compliances.However, on the other hand, the scope includes defining the constraints of testing, like outdated functionality, low-risk areas, features, modules, and integrations.

Step-2: Identify stakeholders and their requirements.Clarity in identifying the existing and future stakeholders can give an alignment with business priorities and prevent requirement creep. Know about your product owners to work on business-critical features, and market priorities (if any)Pay attention to the developers involved with your organizations, and the end users. They would be the ones who will judge your performance of technical & business outcomes.

Step-3: Choose testing methodologies and tools.Strategizing the tools and overall methodologies can prove to be a game changer in accomplishing a high efficiency and depth in the testing process and efforts put in. Select the right mix, and opt for approaches for instance exploratory testing, automation, or risk-based testing process. The same goes for selecting the testing tools out there.

Step-4: Document the strategy and communicate it to the team.Maintaining a well-documented test plan could serve as a source of truth and confident belief for the entire team. Key elements to be included in this documentation could be the timeline, objectives, responsibilities, communication channels, review sessions, scope, and end-goals. Adopting this way of working on test planning could prove to foster transparency and the right commitment needed for your team and stakeholders.

Step-5: Review and refine regularly.QA testing document couldn't be like any static one. It must have the project dynamics, new insights gained, shifting priorities, and regular reviews taken. Having a timely update on the test strategies could give you the relevance and effectiveness of professionalism.Refinement on every step can entail a data-driven and proactive approach for your focused stakeholders.

Real-World Example: IBM’s Test Strategy & Its Impact on Success

IBM’s Approach to Test Strategy: The Key Elements

IBM’s test plan is known to be meticulously designed and has a focus on both functional and non-functional testing. These are some key components:

IBM’s testing goals align with pre-deciding all stages of the software lifecycle, from early unit testing to system-level integration and user acceptance testing (UAT).

IBM applies and follows a hybrid testing methodology. It’s done by combining automated and manual testing with their agile principles. Their segregation prioritizes automation testing for regression and performance tests. While the other way, manual testing consists of exploratory and user-centered tests in order to capture usability issues and edge cases.This balance allows a rigorous & thorough coverage.

IBM has a suite of in-house and third-party testing tools in their CI/CD pipelines. This integration allows them a quick feedback loop. This combination essentially includes Rational Test, Jenkins, and LoadRunner.

A risk-based testing approach is what makes IBM an optimal example of resource optimization. This style significantly employs a focus on critical areas with the highest impact on their business functionality. It could be either any new features, security-sensitive modules, or other critical workflows.

Systematic collaboration between QA teams, business stakeholders, product managers, and developers, can ensure how well the testing plan can aligned with business goals and customer needs. This transparency and involvement proves IBM to address potential issues even before the development begins.

IBM’s strategy for its testing ecosystem is never static. It undergoes constant adjustments, & reviews with each of its product releases- whether from the performance or defect reports.This continuous improvement & refinement could be considered as a post-mortem analysis. It could significantly help in tweaking the strategy for any future endeavors.

Impact on Project Success: IBM case-study

IBM’s strategy for their testing ecosystem has significantly led to a number of successful product releases, IBM Watson or IBM Cloud. Their emphasis has always been on testing that takes care of both functionality & performance in demanding environments. Some direct benefits are:

Very Fewer Defects in Production: Integration of tests early in the lifecycle, and keeping it continuously refined can reduce a huge number of potential risks & critical bugs found post-deployment. According to IBM, they have been successful in scaling up to 30 million inspections for an immediate & significant reduction in their defects.

Quicker Time-to-Market: IBM’s automated tests which are integrated into the CI/CD pipeline, are responsible for providing a faster feedback loop. In the long run, this actually helps to deliver features at a rapid pace. According to them,

A 474% ROI is predicted within three years based on the extensive ROI modeling done of their existing test environment, and payback is estimated to be around 6 months.

Scalability & Reliability: A combination of load testing, and rigorous performance has always helped IBM’s systems. The results are pretty evident when performed reliably under heavy user loads. This is actually a secret of how efficient IBM Cloud and other enterprise-level applications are as a market success.

Conclusion

IBM's success highlights how a structured test strategy can significantly influence project quality, efficiency, and success. Organizations can achieve better outcomes through structured planning, agile execution, and continuous improvement.

Furthermore, creating a roadmap for automation testing ensures seamless execution of automated tests, resulting in higher productivity, faster feedback, and consistent delivery.

It’s evident that a strategic approach to testing can reduce costs, improve efficiency, and drive success across the entire development lifecycle.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some metrics that indicate the effectiveness of a test strategy?

Key metrics include:

Percentage of test coverage

Time-to-market reduction

Rate of detecting defects in early stages

Customer satisfaction and feedback scores

Analysis of the defect leakage ratio

What is a test automation roadmap?

A test automation roadmap is a step-by-step plan to implement automation testing effectively. It outlines:

Automation goals and scope

Tools and frameworks selection

Key milestones

ROI analysis

How can a roadmap for automation testing benefit my organization?

A well-defined roadmap for automation testing ensures:

Faster execution of repetitive tasks

Higher test coverage

Early detection of bugs

Significant time and cost savings

How often should I refine my test strategy?

A test strategy should be reviewed and updated regularly, ideally at every project milestone or release cycle, to adapt to shifting priorities and new insights.

Bibliography

IBM Blog on AI and Inspection

IBM Redbooks on Cloud Testing

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A COO’s Guide to Test Strategy Creation

A test strategy is a set of high-level definitions that determine how software testing processes are going to be performed, driving our decisions on how to invest our testing efforts. Creating a well-thought test strategy is crucial to understanding the overall scope of your project, and what testing approaches, tools and skills are required in order to develop a successful product that provides…

Before you start law school, the one book everyone will tell you to read is Getting to Maybe. As its subtitle How to Excel on Law School Exams might suggest, it’s a tract on how to excel on law school exams. Its essential thesis is that up to law school, most exams lavishly award students who can identify the “right” answer. But a law school exam — in which complex fact patterns are devised with no clear “right” answer, requiring students to apply legal analysis to both sides of an issue — is a different beast that requires a different approach. The book describes how to live and thrive in this land of “maybe” in which law school exams exist.

Before you start law school, of course, you also have to take the LSAT. And on the LSAT, well, there is a right answer. Not to blow your mind or anything, but there’s one right answer choice, and then four wrong answer choices. Which, I know, that’s a no duh statement if there’s ever been one. But think about what that means. For one — I’m not a math person, so someone might need to check my work here — it means 80% of the answer choices are wrong. It also means that 80% of the answer choices have at least one concrete, articulable reason why they’re wrong. It also means that questions do not feature more than one right answer, with one being “more right” than the other.

In other words, unlike law school exams, the LSAT isn’t a test that exists in the land of “maybe.” It’s a land of a “right”/”wrong” binary. And yet, in my experience, most students still approach these answer choices with “maybe” on their minds.

Some of us are fortunate enough — for the sake of our performance on these kinds of tests, anyway — to self-identify as someone who is “good” at standardized tests. But others self-identify as someone who is “not good” or even “bad” at standardized tests. There are a multitude of factors that might distinguish these two types of people, but after teaching many students and trying to pick their brains as they approach a question, I realized most students who profess to struggle with standardized tests tend to approach answer choices in a similar way. And I suspect that their struggles relate to this approach. It isn’t the case that these students are less intelligent or conscientious than their standardized test-slaying peers. Their struggles, I believe, have more to do with their generosity towards the answer choices.

Here’s what I mean: someone who tends to struggle on standardized tests like the LSAT will look at each answer choice through the lens of “maybe.” They’ll see answer choice (A) and think, “Hmm, there are definitely some things I don’t like about (A), but there are some things I like about it too. It’s maybe right, so let me look at (B) through (E) to see if any are better than (A).” And then they’ll look at (B), and think, “Well, (B) is maybe worse than (A), but it has some redeeming qualities, too. (A) is still the best, but I still want to compare (C) through (E) to (A), and maybe (B) as well, for good measure.” And then they apply the same analysis to (C), and (D), and (E). And usually they’re left with two or three answer choices. And then they’re forced to debate which one is “better.” And then they leave that question thinking they “maybe” got it right.

This is the exact wrong kind of approach to have on the LSAT. It’s not a test of “maybe” or of comparing the relative merits of answer choices. Those who self-identify as “good test takers” instead approach the answer choices by saying, simply, “Yes, this is correct” or “No, this is incorrect.” They don’t have to compare one answer choice to another. They don’t have to look for the redeeming qualities in otherwise problematic answer choices. And if you’re someone who struggles on standardized tests like the LSAT, this is how you should approach these answer choices too — with a “yes”/”no” approach.

You should be unsparing in your assessment of these answer choices. Remember, most of them are wrong. You should approach each answer choice as an opportunity to articulate why it’s wrong. And as soon as you see a problem with an answer choice, eliminate it. You don’t have to think about why it’s maybe redeemable, as if to spare the answer choice’s feelings. You can be incredibly harsh and dismissive to these answer choices, and they won’t take it personally. Trust me, I’ve been saying mean things about answer choices to classrooms full of people for years, with nary a peep from these answer choices.

Having this “maybe” approach might seem like careful and thorough analysis, but it really just slowing you down, wasting your mental energy, and putting you in a position to make all-too-common test mistakes. Approaching the answer choices with “maybe” means you’re given a full and complete analysis to every answer choices. Often more than once. If instead you approached these answer choices with a “yes”/”no” approach, you’d only have to look at each answer choice, at most, one time. And sometimes, when you find an answer choice you can say “yes” to early on, you don’t necessarily have to look at the remaining answer choices.

Comparing answer choices’ relative strengths and weaknesses also means you have to keep more than one answer choice in your head at a given time. So you’re keeping a lot of data in your head as you look at each answer choice. This overstresses your mental bandwidth and makes it harder to process new information. You’re making an already difficult question more difficult.

And when you’re in this land of “maybe” you’re increasing the likelihood that you’ll commit one of the most common mistakes on the LSAT: finding the right answer, looking at the remaining answer choices, getting distracted by something appealing in a wrong answer choice, and choosing the wrong one instead. If you just went with the answer choice that looked good initially, you would have gotten that question correct and saved some valuable time.

Instead of approaching answer choices with “maybe” mindset, you want to approach them with a “yes”/”no” mindset. Or really, a “no”/”yes” mindset. An answer choice carries an 80% probability of being wrong. It’s probably wrong. Look for problems with it. As soon as you see an issue with that answer choice, eliminate it. Even if the problem seems kind of minor — like, sure, this answer choice talking about what is morally unacceptable, and the question was talking about what is not morally virtuous, can I say those two are the same thing? — do what D.A.R.E. taught you and just say “no” to that answer choice.

If an answer choice doesn’t have any problems — or, better yet, if your answer choice matches what you anticipated to be correct — say “yes” to it. Select it, and be confident in your selection. Give a cursory look to the remaining answer choices if you must — again, quickly looking for problems with each answer choice. In my opinion though — and I should mention that this is a point on which reasonable minds differ — any time spent looking at the remaining answer choices is at best wasted time and at worst an opportunity to get tempted into selecting a sucker answer choice.

Of course, you won’t get every question correct with this approach. You’ll sometimes say “yes” to wrong answer choices and “no” to the right ones. But even when that happens, it’ll be a learning opportunity. You’ll be better able to retrace your mental steps through the question and figure out what led you to thinking an incorrect answer choice was correct. It’s a lot easier to figure out what you were thinking when you had a simple “no”/”yes” approach than if you had a super complicated approach that involves comparing and contrasting answer choices. And when you’re better able to figure out what led you to make a mistake, you’ll be less likely to make those mistakes in the future.

So for every question you do, approach the answer choices with a “no”/”yes” mindset. One exercise I’ve found useful: look at each answer choice by itself. Use note cards to cover the other answer choices. And make a decision about whether it’s right or wrong. You only get one opportunity to look at an answer choice, and you have to say “no” or “yes” to it. Once you say “yes” to an answer choice, check to see if you got it right, even if you haven’t looked at some of the remaining answer choices. You’ll find on most occasions, your first “yes” is the right answer. This will make feel more confident in your approach, and less likely to default to unhelpful “maybes.” And once you’re able to say “yes” to the answer choices, you won’t leave questions not feeling like you “maybe” got it right. You’ll feel like “Yes, I just earned that point.”

Three hundred hours spent on developing a software can be made useless in just 30 seconds with a single defect identified in production.