Managing Test Projects – Fall 2014
15 Middlesex Canal Park Drive
Woburn, MA 01801
USA
Date & Time: Friday, November 21; 8:30AM – 5:00PM
Location: Crowne Plaza Hotel, 15 Middlesex Canal Park Road, Woburn, MA
Speaker: Robin Goldsmith, President, GoPro Management
By: Nov 11
Members: $225
Non Members: $245
After: Nov 11
Members: $245
Non-Members: $265
Decision: Thursday, Nov 13
Course Summary
Treating testing as a sub-project within an overall development project enhances success by applying proven project management methods, while also addressing testing’s unique aspects, which can make it even more challenging than the already difficult job of managing a typical project. This intensive interactive seminar workshop shows how to manage testing as a project so it provides effective testing on time and in budget. This course also helps test managers learn to better communicate the value of their testing and negotiate for scarce time, resources, and influence. Exercises provide practice applying the techniques and learning how to avoid common pitfalls.
Participants will learn:
How testing must be managed as a project in its own right and also as part of the larger project.
Using test planning to identify tasks and approaches needed for successful testing
outcomes.
Methods for reliably estimating the time, effort, costs, and resources required.
Techniques for scheduling tasks to reduce risks and optimize resource assignment utilization.
Roles, responsibilities, leadership, direction, and supervision for team member performance.
Project control tools and techniques for tracking and reporting measures of project accomplishment.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
This course has been designed for systems and business managers, project managers, project leaders, analysts and other professionals who may manage software projects.
OUTLINE
I. TESTING IS A PROJECT TO BE MANAGED
Project nature and critical success factors
Most important determinant of success
Testing as a project within overall project
Why knowing how to test is not enough
Key Project Manager roles/competencies
Project management, development lifecycles
Why we get impossible deadlines/budgets
Countering Parkinson’s Law
Establishing credibility, managing by facts
Testing’s double budget/schedule whammy
Project Manager, Test Manager deliverables
Test Managers must excel Project
Managers
Projects succeed/fail in the first 15 minutes
II. TEST PLANNING VALUE NOT BUSYWORK
Planning purposes, key to project delivery
Conventional reactive test planning
Proactive TestinTM risk-based strategy
IEEE Std. test planning structure benefits
Test planning vs. test design
Master Test Plan counterpart to project plan
Identifying what must be demonstrated
Approach, use of automated tools
Entry/exit criteria, anticipating change
Defining scope so it doesn’t creep
Testing to business vs. system requirements
Testing roles and responsibilities
Enlisting and leveraging developers
Authority and reporting relationships
Communicating value of testing
III. ESTIMATING TIME, EFFORT, RESOURCES
Top-down vs. bottom-up estimates
Overcoming major source of estimate errors
Work breakdown structure, scaling by levels
Identifying ordinarily overlooked tasks
Addressing divergent resource productivity
Gauging deliverables size and complexity
Metrics the Test Manager needs to know
Manual vs. automated productivity
PERT and weighted averages risk reduction
Productive time scheduling practicalities
Gantt charts and resource leveling
Dependency networks, Critical Path/Chain
Contingencies and Plan B
Cost/benefit analysis and communication
Negotiating commitments and resources
IV. DIRECTING AND CONTROLLING TESTING
Management vs. leadership
Delegating and encouraging effort
Motivation, rewards, and recognition
Supervising and reviewing performance
Manager is between team and organization
Monitoring against budget and schedule
Assuring quality of the testing, too
Catching problems and adjusting in-process
Earned value measure of completion
Automated tools, strengths and limits
Tracking, analyzing, reporting defects
Automated tools suitability, warnings
Reporting to management, key to influence