When you take on a large testing project you find some interesting management issues.

• You have multiple people doing the testing and you have to be confident you know how they are testing

  • You want to know they are doing the same tests
  • You want to know how much they have tested
  • You want to have a record of what they have done
  • You want to know who did the testing

• You have multiple items you are testing and you want to be confident what you are testing

  • You want to know what model was tested
  • You want to know what version was tested

• It takes significant time to do all of this and you want to be sure when testing was done

A simple test tool that is helpful in addressing these testing issues is the test data sheet. This can be as simple as a spreadsheet or as complicated as an interactive web site.

To address the issues above, you want to have a place on your test data sheet for each of the following:

• Tester name
• Test date
• Model numbers involved in the test
• Serial numbers involved in the test
• Hardware/Firmware/Software versions involved in the test
• An identifier for the test(s) being performed
• The result of the test (Pass/Fail: Explanation)

It just sounds like paperwork, but a month after four people finish running a dozen tests on three devices in five configurations from each of nine vendors you will appreciate having that pile of paper (or bits) to refer back to.

Labels: pm, rfi

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