Happy About Global Software Test Automation: A Discussion of Software Testing for Executives - Softcover

Hung Q. Nguyen; Michael Hackett; Brent K. Whitlock

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1600050115 ISBN 13: 9781600050114

Publisher: Happy About, 2006

Synopsis

Testing problems are difficult, expensive, and hard to understand. Most software companies have bugs escape the testing cycles and reach customers. How can some of the inherent problems with software testing be eliminated? This book addresses this fundamental issue and helps the reader understand the high-level elements necessary to better execute software test automation and outsourcing initiatives. Although your team may know about test automation, have they ever executed efficiently to meet the goals of faster delivery, better quality, and saving money? If not, this book is a must read. The goal of the book is to help make testing less of an albatross and to provide a guide to software testing success. If done right, you can: Increase quality, Decrease cost and Increase speed to market. Co-Apple founder Steve Wozniak says that "Software is complex but I'm tired of finding bug after bug that a 5th grader wouldn't have turned in. Virtually every technical product these days includes a lot of software. It's a rare engineer that can write nearly perfect code. Methodical and thorough testing of software is the key to quality products that do what the user expects. Read this book to learn what you need to do!"

About this title

About the Author

Hung Nguyen is CEO, President, and Founder of LogiGear and is responsible for the company's strategic direction and executive business management. He's been a leading innovator in software testing, test automation, testing tool solutions and testing education programs for the last two decades.

Mr. Nguyen is coauthor of the top-selling book in the software testing field, Testing Computer Software (Wiley, 2nd ed. 2002) and other publications including Testing Applications on the Web (Wiley, 2nd ed. 2003). His experience over the past two decades includes leadership roles in software development, quality, product and business management at Spinnaker, PowerUp, Electronic Arts, Palm Computing and other leading companies. A frequent speaker at industry events and a contributor to many industry publications, Nguyen also teaches software testing at LogiGear University, and at the University of California Berkeley Extension and Santa Cruz Extension in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Michael Hackett is co-founded LogiGear in 1994 and leads the company's LogiGear University training operations division, setting the standard in software testing education programs for many of the world's leading software development organizations. Mr. Hackett is coauthor of the popular Testing Applications on the Web (Wiley, 2nd ed. 2003), and has helped many clients produce, test and deploy applications ranging from business productivity to educational multimedia across multiple platforms and multiple language editions. His clients have included Palm Computing, Oracle, CNET, Electronics for Imaging, The Learning Company, and PC World.

Prior to co-founding LogiGear, Mr. Hackett managed QA teams at The Well, Adobe Systems, and PowerUp Software. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Brent K. Whitlock is currently a Program Manager at Digidesign, a division of Avid Technology, Inc. Prior to this, he was Director of Optical Systems Research and Business Development at RSoft Design Group, Inc., where he initiated and led the development and commercialization of several optical communication system simulation software packages including LinkSIM, ModeSYS, and OptSim 4, which won the Lightwave OFC/NFOEC 2005 Attendees Choice Award. He has also secured and served as Principal Investigator on federally funded SBIR, STTR, and NIST ATP research contracts.

Dr. Whitlock earned his BS, MS, and PhD all in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Whitlock has co-authored over 30 technical papers and articles. He is a Sr. Member of the IEEE and Chair of the Santa Clara Valley chapter of IEEE LEOS.

From the Back Cover

"Software is complex but I'm tired of finding bug after bug that a 5th grader wouldn't have turned in. Virtually every technical product these days includes a lot of software. It's a rare engineer that can write nearly perfect code. Methodical and thorough testing of software is the key to quality products that do what the user expects. Read this book to learn what you need to do!" Steve Wozniak, Wheels of Zeus, CTO

"In theory, test automation is supposed to be a silver bullet to increase test coverage and improve quality; offshoring is supposed to drastically cut costs. In reality, many organizations struggle with both, and don't see significant gains despite extensive efforts. This book clearly presents the challenges of test automation and a practical way for organizations of any size to overcome them to realize significant time and cost savings in their software testing effort. Every executive responsible for development and testing of software should become familiar with these ideas!" Bruce Martin, Vice President, Product Strategy, PSS Systems

"Offshoring by itself is not enough.This book provides you testing strategies to stay ahead of the competition and maximize your investment." Robert S. Alvin, CEO and Chairman, Netline Corporation

"Despite continued advances in development techniques and technologies, software quality problems are as pervasive as ever. Software testing teams are under tremendous pressure to test more complex systems with the same or fewer resources, and corporate managers are always looking to shave costs by leveraging offshore testing. This book does a great job of highlighting the fundamental challenges of software testing today, and then presents a thoughtful solution for leveraging test automation and offshoring to meeting your organizations quality goals." Adam Au, Vice President, Engineering, Centrify Corporation

"Automation isn't just about technical decisions. Finally, this book is the first that offers a practical business case for effective test automation." Michael Hatam, President, Application Services, Moyo Group

"This is one of the must read books by software executives. It goes over the major concepts and best practices of software testing in an efficient and effective manner. At Sun, we already use some of the best practices described in this book and are planning to adopt the remaining best practices." Satya Dodda, QA Director, J2EE App Server, Sun Micro Systems, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Partial Content from Chapter 1: Why you should read this book As an executive, it is your job to set the strategic direction for your company to succeed in the marketplace. You need to set strategies for marketing, sales, R&D, finance, IT, human resources, and support services. In a software company, test strategies are as essential to business success as software development strategies. Despite their importance, most companies lack explicit software test strategies and frequently suffer from poor product quality and release schedule adherence. This book was written to highlight the critical issues associated with software testing and quality assurance that impact the effectiveness of your company's executive staff and bottom line, and to share a strategy that can improve them. An effective test strategy can do this by improving the visibility into the quality of your company's products, so that you can make better management decisions, lower your testing costs, and accelerate your time to market. No matter your role, we suggest that you read chapter 1. If you are a CEO, COO, or on the executive team, you should also read chapter 6. Browsing the other chapters gives you more information on testing issues, but is not necessary. If you are a CFO, you should read chapters 3, 4, and 5. Browsing chapter 6 is suggested. If you are the VP of Engineering or responsible for testing in your company, we highly recommend that you spend time on chapter 6. You might also find chapters 2-5 useful.

Summary Software testing should have its own budget and be properly funded because it is: A service to the company to help it produce and release higher quality software products. A service to the development team to help it produce higher quality code. An information service to the executive to provide visibility into the software product quality and enable more effective management. An enabler to help you sleep better at night.

Driving toward the solution In the rest of this book, we discuss the following: An overview of software testing The pitfalls of manual software testing and some suggestions for improvement The pitfalls of software test automation and some suggestions for improvement The pitfalls of outsourcing/offshoring and some suggestions for improvement The Global Test Automation strategy Case studies and quotes from experience in these areas

Edition details

• Publisher: Happy About
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1600050115
• ISBN 13: 9781600050114
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 164