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    Test Management and Organizational Structure - 3nov

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    tushar umrao
    The document discusses different organizational structures for software testing teams and their pros and cons. It describes 4 common structures: 1. Small teams where testing reports to development management, which can cause conflicts of interest. This works if management values quality over speed. 2. Testing and development report separately to project management, giving testing some independence but quality decisions still rest with project management. 3. For high-risk systems, it's best to have quality assurance report directly to executive management for complete independence in setting standards and processes across projects.

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    Test Management and Organizational Structure - 3nov

    Uploaded by

    tushar umrao
    40 views3 pages
    The document discusses different organizational structures for software testing teams and their pros and cons. It describes 4 common structures: 1. Small teams where testing reports to development management, which can cause conflicts of interest. This works if management values quality over speed. 2. Testing and development report separately to project management, giving testing some independence but quality decisions still rest with project management. 3. For high-risk systems, it's best to have quality assurance report directly to executive management for complete independence in setting standards and processes across projects.

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    Test Management and Organizational Structure_3nov

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    The document discusses different organizational structures for software testing teams and their pros and cons. It describes 4 common structures: 1. Small teams where testing reports to development management, which can cause conflicts of interest. This works if management values quality over speed. 2. Testing and development report separately to project management, giving testing some independence but quality decisions still rest with project management. 3. For high-risk systems, it's best to have quality assurance report directly to executive management for complete independence in setting standards and processes across projects.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    40 views3 pages

    Test Management and Organizational Structure - 3nov

    Uploaded by

    tushar umrao
    The document discusses different organizational structures for software testing teams and their pros and cons. It describes 4 common structures: 1. Small teams where testing reports to development management, which can cause conflicts of interest. This works if management values quality over speed. 2. Testing and development report separately to project management, giving testing some independence but quality decisions still rest with project management. 3. For high-risk systems, it's best to have quality assurance report directly to executive management for complete independence in setting standards and processes across projects.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 3

    Test Management and Organizational Structure

    Test group's name and its assumed responsibilities, there's another attribute that greatly affects
    what it does and how it works with the project team. That attribute is where it fits in the
    company's overall management structure. A number of organizational structures are possible,
    each having its own positives and negatives. Some are claimed to be generally better than others,
    but what's better for one may not necessarily be better for another. If you work for any length of
    time in software testing, you'll be exposed to many of them. Here are a few common examples.

    Figure 21.2 shows a structure often used by small (fewer than 10 or so people) project teams. In
    this structure, the test group reports into the Development Manager, the person managing the
    work of the programmers. Given what you've learned about software testing, this should raise a
    red flag of warning to you the people writing the code and the people finding bugs in that code
    reporting to the same person has the potential for big problems.

    Figure 21.2. The organizational structure for a small project often has the test team
    reporting to the development manager.

    There's the inevitable conflict of interest. The Development Manager's goal is to have his team
    develop software. Testers reporting bugs just hinder that process. Testers doing their job well on
    one side make the programmers look bad on the other. If the manager gives more resources and
    funding to the testers, they'll probably find more bugs, but the more bugs they find, the more
    they'll crimp the manager's goals of making software.
    Despite these negatives, this structure can work well if the development manager is very
    experienced and realizes that his goal isn't just to create software, but to create quality software.
    Such a manager would value the testers as equals to the programmers. This is also a very good
    organization for communications flow. There are minimal layers of management and the testers
    and programmers can very efficiently work together.

    Figure 21.3 shows another common organizational structure where both the test group and the
    development group report to the manager of the project. In this arrangement, the test group often
    has its own lead or manager whose interest and attention is focused on the test team and their
    work. This independence is a great advantage when critical decisions are made regarding the
    software's quality. The test team's voice is equal to the voices of the programmers and other
    groups contributing to the product.

    Figure 21.3. In an organization where the test team reports to the project manager, there's
    some independence of the testers from the programmers.

    The downside, however, is that the project manager is making the final decision on quality. This
    may be fine, and in many industries and types of software, it's perfectly acceptable. In the
    development of high-risk or mission-critical systems, however, it's sometimes beneficial to have
    the voice of quality heard at a higher level. The organization shown in Figure 21.4 represents
    such a structure.
    Figure 21.4. A quality assurance or test group that reports to executive management has the
    most independence, the most authority, and the most responsibility.

    In this organization, the teams responsible for software quality report directly to senior
    management, independent and on equal reporting levels to the individual projects. The level of
    authority is often at the quality assurance level, not just the testing level. The independence that
    this group holds allows them to set standards and guidelines, measure the results, and adopt
    processes that span multiple projects. Information regarding poor quality (and good quality) goes
    straight to the top.

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