- you list that piece in the not-to-test category and assign a risk to not testing it. As you complete testing, you update the test plan (or preferably, the test reporting) with your completed plans and tests.
4. Evaluate your progress at the end of every week of testing, and report test data. If you can verify fixes as you test, plan to continue testing and verifying through the fifth week. If not, plan on completing the testing -as far as you can go-in week four.
5. You're now at week five. If you haven't been able to verify fixes yet, this is the time to do so. As you verify fixes, you'll perform whatever regression tests you have created to make sure the fixes didn't break anything. If this takes you the full two weeks, you're done. If you have another week, you can attack more features, employing the end-to-end testing you've done before.
6. In week six, you verify the last of the fixes and report on your progress and what you know and don't know about the product.
I'm certainly not recommending you only utilize six weeks for testing on a project. The time you need for testing is dependent on what's in the project and how well the product is built. But, if you're ever caught in a pickle, where you don't have enough time to test everything, use timeboxing to help you evaluate how little you can do and still deliver a valuable result to the organization.
Acknowledgements:
I thank Dave Liebreich, Bob Johnson, and James Tierney for their reviews.
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About the author
Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” helps organizational leaders see problems and risks in their product development. She helps them recognize potential “gotchas,” seize opportunities, and remove impediments. Johanna was the Agile 2009 conference chair. She is the technical editor for Agile Connection and the author of these books:
- Manage Your Job Search
- Hiring Geeks That Fit
- Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
- The 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
- Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
- Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People
Johanna is working on a book about agile program management. She writes columns for Stickyminds.com and projectmanagementcom and blogs on her website, jrothman.com, as well on createadaptablelife.com.
