Test Process Improvement
Readers who have been working in IT for a long time will remember the days when testing was the task of the junior person on the team. Since then, testing has come a long way--to the point where it is recognized as a vital profession. This book addresses test-process improvement with a practice-based model.
Review By: Mary Ann Overbaugh
09/17/2003This book takes a holistic view similar to other process-improvement models such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Process Improvement (BPI). The book makes the model and concepts easy to grasp by using some of the language of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and of Key Process Areas (KPA) and levels of maturity.
The Test Process Improvement (TPI) model provides both a process-improvement model and a quick-assessment guide to help determine the maturity of the test process. It can be very helpful for setting up a quality assurance testing group although it was not intentionally designed to be a “from scratch” method. Since it models best practices and gives guidelines and techniques, it helps practitioners think about and include all the important areas of test management in the design of their testing area.
Several of the chapters can be useful to QA management in developing training programs for the QA and Development teams. Topics include planning, testing, metrics, and tracking and management of the test environment.
The TPI Model is very concise and tightly constructed. The book includes many pieces of wisdom about making changes within your test group in an organized fashion.
I found this book very helpful, concise, and useful for setting up a new testing group.
It focuses on the most important practices to consider and has helpful tips and techniques to improve the test process. Being a student of the CMM, the language was very familiar and the authors did not try to make up a whole new set of constructs and definitions that had to be learned first. This made the concepts easy to grasp. Using the model and performing the assessment would greatly help a company to determine the robustness of their testing unit.
I am familiar with one of the authors, Martin Pol, from my CQA Body of Knowledge. I fully expected something of value from this book and got it. This book is a genuine contribution to testing methodology and its practitioners.
User Comments
I also read and used the book on several projects. Very, very helpful. The first TPI project I did, was on a project with IQUIP, where Martin Pol used to work. I've implemented it successfuly afterwards several times.
I have read the book and think that it a very constructive and practical way to improve the SW Test Process. Thoroughly recommended!
I certainly agree that both the book and the TPI model are valuable contributions. In fact, I have used both on several assessments of testing practices, both at the project level and the organization level. I have had to make only two changes to ensure that the participants in the assessments could really understand what was being asked of them and what I was recommending. Some of the language in the TPI checkpoints is somewhat convoluted and arcane and tended to confuse participants in the assessment, especially the non-testers (e.g., project managers, developers, DBAs, configuration managers). So, without compromising substance, I've simplified the wording in the checkpoints to make it more direct and active. Secondly, I found it difficult to manually keep track of and communicate the relevance of the dependencies among checkpoints and key areas. The tool on the TPI web site does not address this problem. So, with a lot of help from an Excel expert, I created a tool that uses formulas to ensure that the dependencies are respected. The results of using this variation on the TPI model have been quite astounding, especially when I've had the opportunity to perform a follow-up assessment -- quantifiable findings led to very specific, feasible, prioritized recommendations, which in turn led to equally quantifiable improvements.