What you should know

- [Instructor] Quality organizations vary in size and depending on your organization, you may be the sole person responsible for executing a test or you could be part of a larger team of people administering multiple projects at a time. When I first helped start Centercode, I was the sole manager of the test projects we signed up. Our software did a lot of the heavy lifting but it still required a lot of juggling to make it work. Today, we support companies and projects of all sizes. At its core, we still focus on good planning and processes in assuring every project is a success. The information in this course is designed to provide a broad overview of the entire planning process so that any person in a quality role can benefit. But there are a few things that would be helpful to know before we get going. For starters in order to gain the most benefit from this class you should have a solid, basic understanding of software development. You don't have to code but you should understand what is involved in writing code and how software builds are managed. You should also have a basic understanding of issue management and tracking related to software. Next, you should be fairly well educated on the product you're testing and its market. Effective test management starts with being able to identify problems and knowing your product well helps you spot those anomalies. Throughout this course we're going to be using a fictional tourism application called Explore California. As part of our journey, I don't want you to focus on the application itself, but on what it takes to learn about the product and how having that knowledge will help planning. You can't speak to problems if you don't know they exist. In addition in order to author plans or test cases, knowledge of your software and related platforms is critical. Test plans are designed to exercise all components of a product and knowing your software upside-down and inside-out makes it easier to author these documents. This course also expects you to be fully invested in the quality process. This means you care about your product's quality and its eventual success. It may seem obvious but I've worked with many quality teams who see themselves as a regimented machine designed to hunt bugs but that's not true. You are an important part of the product development and the voice of the customer. Last, I encourage you to be open minded and flexible. We're going over a specific example throughout the course but the processes defined here do have room for adjustment to suit your specific project's needs. Every process we're going to talk about in this course is founded on best practices of quality testing. So, following closely should yield the best results. However, every company and product is different and you may need to make this course work for you and your organization. As part of this course, I have created some useful resources including a product requirements document, or P-R-D, a sample test plan and a sample test case. There is a lot of information in there and we're not going to cover it all but it helps give perspective on the nuts and bolts of our Explore California application and test.