1. KEY IDEA
Use a diversified test strategy
that will serve the mission.

2. Test Strategy
“How we plan to cover the product so as to develop an adequate assessment of quality.”
A good test strategy is:
Product-Specific
Risk-focused
Diversified
Practical

3. Test Strategy
Test Approach and Test Architecture are other terms commonly used to describe what I’m calling test strategy.
Example of a poorly stated (and probably poorly conceived) test strategy:
“We will use black box testing, cause-effect graphing, boundary testing, and white box testing to test this product against its specification.”

4. Test Strategy Makes use of test techniques.
May be expressed by test procedures and cases.
Not to be confused with test logistics, which involve the details of bringing resources to bear on the test strategy at the right time and place.
You don’t have to know the entire strategy in advance. The strategy should change as you learn more about the product and its problems.

5. Test Cases/Procedures
Test cases and procedures should manifest the test strategy.
If your strategy is to “execute the test suite I got from Joe Third-Party”, how does that answer the prime strategic questions:
How will you cover the product and assess quality?
How is that practical and justified with respect to the specifics of this project and product?
If you don’t know, then your real strategy is that you’re trusting things to work out.

6. Produce a test strategy for DecideRight
Exercise
Produce a test strategy for DecideRight

7. Test Strategy Heuristic: Diverse Half-Measures
There is no single technique that finds all bugs.
We can’t do any technique perfectly.
We can’t do all conceivable techniques.
Use “diverse half-measures”-- lots of different
points of view, approaches, techniques, even if no one strategy is performed completely.

8. Strategy Heuristic: Function/Data Square
Functions
smoke
testing
Function testing
Data
reliability
testing
risk testing

9. The Fallacy of Repeated Tests: Clearing Mines

10. Totally Repeatable Tests Won’t Clear the Minefield
mines
fixes

11. Variable Tests are Therefore More Effective
mines
fixes

12. Exercise Find at least two situations where the heuristic:
“Variable tests are better than repeated tests”
is WRONG.