What is quality: Several ways to define quality

1) a measure of excellence or a state of being free from defects, deficiencies, and significant variations, brought about by the strict and consistent adherence to measurable and verifiable standards to achieve uniformity of output that satisfies specific customer or user requirements. 2) A planned and systematic pattern of all actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that an item or product conforms to established technical requirements. 3) A set of activities designed to evaluate the process by which the products are developed, tested and shipped

Software Quality Management: q Concerned with ensuring that the required level of quality is achieved in a software product. q Involves defining appropriate quality standards and procedures and ensuring that these are followed. q Should aim to develop a quality culture where quality is seen as everyones responsibility. q Quality management is particularly important for large, complex systems. The quality documentation is a record of progress and supports continuity of development as the development team changes. q For smaller systems, quality management needs less documentation and should focus on establishing a quality culture. Quality management activities: q Quality assurance Establish organisational procedures and standards for quality.

q Quality control QC Vs QA QC QA Ensure that procedures and standards are followed by the software development team.

Product Process Reactive Proactive Line function Staff function Find defects Prevent defect

Many people and organizations are confused about the difference between quality assurance (QA), quality control (QC), and testing. They are closely related, but they are different concepts.

But all these three are useful to manage risks of developing and managing software.

Quality Assurance: A set of activities designed to ensure that the development and/or maintenance process is adequate to ensure a system will meet its objectives. Quality Control: A set of activities designed to evaluate a developed work product. Testing: The process of executing a system with the intent of finding defects. (Note that the "process of executing a system" includes test planning prior to the execution of the test cases.)

QA activities ensure that the process is defined and appropriate. Methodology and standards development are examples of QA activities. A QA review would focus on the process elements of a project - e.g., are requirements being defined at the proper level of detail.

QC activities focus on finding defects in specific deliverables - e.g., are the defined requirements the right requirements

Testing is one example of a QC activity, but there are others such as inspections

The difference is that QA is process oriented and QC is product oriented.

Testing therefore is product oriented and thus is in the QC domain. Testing for quality isn't assuring quality, it's controllingit.

Quality Assurance makes sure you are doing the right things, the right way. Quality Control makes sure the results of what you've done are what you expected.

Many people and organizations are confused about the difference between quality assurance (QA), quality control (QC), and testing. They are closely related, but they are different concepts.

But all these three are useful to manage risks of developing and managing software.

Quality Assurance: A set of activities designed to ensure that the development and/or maintenance process is adequate to ensure a system will meet its objectives.

Quality Control: A set of activities designed to evaluate a developed work product. Testing: The process of executing a system with the intent of finding defects. (Note that the "process of executing a system" includes test planning prior to the execution of the test cases.)

QA activities ensure that the process is defined and appropriate. Methodology and standards development are examples of QA activities. A QA review would focus on the process elements of a project - e.g., are requirements being defined at the proper level of detail.

QC activities focus on finding defects in specific deliverables - e.g., are the defined requirements the right requirements

Testing is one example of a QC activity, but there are others such as inspections

The difference is that QA is process oriented and QC is product oriented.

Testing therefore is product oriented and thus is in the QC domain. Testing for quality isn't assuring quality, it's controllingit.

Quality Assurance makes sure you are doing the right things, the right way. Quality Control makes sure the results of what you've done are what you expected.

http://www.chillarege.com/authwork/TestingBestPractice.pdf

http://www.softwareplanner.com/TestBestPractices.pdf

test lead responsibilities:

Understand the testing effort by analyzing the requirements of project. Estimate and obtain management support for the time, resources and budget required

to perform the testing. Organize the testing kick-off meeting Define the Strategy Build a testing team of professionals with appropriate skills, attitudes and motivation. Identify Training requirements and forward it to the Project Manager (Technical and Soft skills). Develop the test plan for the tasks, dependencies and participants required to mitigate the risks to system quality and obtain stakeholder support for this plan. Arrange the Hardware and software requirement for the Test Setup. Assign task to all Testing Team members and ensure that all of them have sufficient work in the project. Ensure content and structure of all Testing documents / artifacts is documented and maintained.

 Document, implement, monitor, and enforce all processes for testing as per standards

defined by the organization. Check / Review the Test Cases documents. Keep track of the new requirements / change in requirements of the Project. Escalate the issues about project requirements (Software, Hardware, Resources) to Project Manager / Sr. Test Manager. Organize the status meetings and send the Status Report (Daily, Weekly etc.) to the Client Attend the regular client call and discuss the weekly status with the client. Communication with the Client (If required). Act as the single point of contact between Development and Testers. Track and prepare the report of testing activities like test testing results, test case coverage, required resources, defects discovered and their status, performance baselines etc. Review various reports prepared by Test engineers. Ensure the timely delivery of different testing milestones. Prepares / updates the metrics dashboard at the end of a phase or at the completion of project.

Test Lead is responsible to understand and document testing requirements, provide test estimates, create and review test cases, execute and review test results, create and submit test reports to stake holders. a) Understand and analyze Business, Functional, Technical and UI (User Interface) requirements of the project/release. b) Provide Test Estimates for the types of testing carried out. It could be for Assembly and/or APT (Application Product Test) and/or IPT (Integration Product Test) and/or Performance Test. In bigger projects/release each of these testing types will have a different Test Lead. In smaller projects/releases a single test lead may support more than one of these testing types. c) Provide hardware and software requirements based on the testing being carried out. APT (Application Product Test) and IPT (Integration Product Test) will have a different set of Hardware requirements and additional software requirements compared to Performance Testing. d) Creates Test Strategy and Test Approach document for releases, gets it reviewed by required stake holders and keeps updating these documents as and when the changes are required. e) Work with Application, Technical Architects, Business Analysts and other project stake holders to estimate, plan and execute Assembly and/or APT (Application Product Test) and/or IPT (Integration Product Test) and/or Performance Test. They are also responsible to support and co-ordinate during UAT (User Acceptance Test) and ORT (Operations Readiness Test). f) Review test deliverables, defects, test results created by team members.

g) Create reports (daily status reports and weekly reports) and create testing metrics as requested by senior management. h) Manage Testers work (during test plan and test execution), ensure testing is completed on time and within budget, resolve conflicts arising between team members or with external team members, keep team members motivated. i) Identify risks and provide mitigation plan. Escalate issues on timely manner to management. j) Ensure testing team is following testing standards, guidelines, and testing methodology as documented in Test Approach. k) Ensures Entry criteria are met before starting with testing. l) Ensure Exit Criteria is met and communicates the same to required stake holders. Creates and Signs-off on Test Closure Form (also known as Test Closure Memo) and obtains the approval from the required project/release stake holders. m) Ensures deliverables are created as per Quality Management practices followed by the company or as outlined for the project/release. Participate in QA (Quality Assurance) reviews and provides required support and clarifications as need for the reviewers. n) Ensures all the testing deliverables and reports are version controlled and are accessible for testing team and other privileged users. RE: What is the role of test manager, test lead or tes... Responsibilities of a Test Manager: Manage the Testing Department. Allocate resource to projects. Review weekly Testers' status reports and take necessary actions Escalate Testers' issues to the Sr. Management. Estimate for testing projects. Enforce the adherence to the company's Quality processes and procedures. Decision to procure Software Testing tools for the organization. Inter group co-ordination between various departments. Provide technical support to the Testing team. Continuous monitoring and mentoring of Testing team members. Review of test plans and test cases. Attend weekly meeting of projects and provide inputs from the Testers' perspective. Immediate notification/escalation of problems to the Sr. Test Manager / Senior Management. Ensure processes are followed as laid down. Responsibilities of a Test Lead: Prepare the Software Test Plan.
Check / Review the Test Cases document System, Integration and User Acceptance prepared by test engineers. Analyze requirements during the requirements analysis phase of projects. Keep track of the new requirements from the Project. Forecast / Estimate the Project future requirements. Arrange the Hardware and software requirement for the Test Setup. Develop and implement test plans.

 Escalate the issues about project requirements (Software, Hardware, Resources) to Project Manager / Test Manager. Escalate the issues in the application to the Client. Assign task to all Testing Team members and ensure that all of them have sufficient work in the project. Organize the meetings. Prepare the Agenda for the meeting, for example: Weekly Team meeting etc. Attend the regular client call and discuss the weekly status with the client. Send the Status Report (Daily, Weekly etc.) to the Client. Frequent status check meetings with the Team. Communication by means of Chat / emails etc. with the Client (If required). Act as the single point of contact between Development and Testers for iterations, Testing and deployment activities. Track and report upon testing activities, including testing results, test case coverage, required resources, defects discovered and their status, performance baselines, etc. Assist in performing any applicable maintenance to tools used in Testing and resolve issues if any. Ensure content and structure of all Testing documents / artifacts is documented and maintained. Document, implement, monitor, and enforce all processes and procedures for testing is established as per standards defined by the organization. Review various reports prepared by Test engineers. Log project related issues in the defect tracking tool identified for the project. Check for timely delivery of different milestones. Identify Training requirements and forward it to the Project Manager (Technical and Soft skills). Attend weekly Team Leader meeting. Motivate team members. Organize / Conduct internal trainings on various products.

Responsibilities of a tester:
Understand project requirements. Prepare / Update the Test case document for testing of the application from all aspects. Prepare the test setup. Deploy the build in the required setup. Conduct the Testing including Smoke, Sanity, and Bug Bash / Execute the Test cases. Update the Test Result document. Attend the Regular client calls. Log / File the defects in Defect tracking tool / Bug Report. Verify defects. Discuss doubts/queries with Development Team / Client. Conduct internal trainings on various products.