Good testing depends upon a good Test Strategy. A good test strategy is underpinned by a comprehensive Quality Assurance Strategy. I can help you develop both a QA Strategy and a Test Strategy, and I can run and/or conduct test and quality processes.
In my experience - and I have been a QA consultant for many companies including Barclays Bank - testing boils down to a few key tenets:
- Test everything you need to test - Sounds simple, but how do you know what that is? Which platforms? Which features? Which technology? What are the new features under test?
- Test the most important things first - Time is always squeezed and test time is usually the most squeezed of all. When the rug is pulled - as it will be - you need to be confident you have done the best, most relevant testing you can up to that point. It's not good enough to know that your icons line up nicely, but, oh, "... we hadn't got to testing the login screen when you stopped us..."
- Test that other things aren't broken - Regression testing is vitally important; the cost to a business of re-engineering other components at the end of a project's life-cycle is often prohibitive.
How do you do this? With thorough planning, by dedicating the right resources including experienced personnel, with QA processes early in design and development phases, and with test automation tools that can make the repetitive tasks quicker.
Or... you can do as certain large companies do these days, and simply foist your untested systems on the general public, expecting them to be grateful. This is, of course, not what I recommend. It is false economy and, in extreme cases, could contribute to the complete failure of your business.
So, OK, I have this great background in QA and Test Strategy and management, true, but I'm also happy to just be a member of a test team - or indeed, the only tester if necessary! - and I'm perfectly comfortable planning, developing and executing test scripts. Contact me if I can help your project.