Reflecting on the Value of a Testing Centre of Excellence

In my last post I discussed how a Testing Centre of Excellence can reduce cost and create efficiency in an organisation. In this post, I will discuss some of the other benefits of a TCOE.

A Testing Centre of Excellence can:

• Increase test maturity and promote innovation across the organisation
• Define, encourage and enforce best practices
• Define test policy and test strategies aligned with the business needs

Agile Strategies for Managing a Marketing Team with Scrum

As a multi-award winning software testing consultancy, nFocus live and breathe Agile. So much so that we decided to run our Marketing Team using Scrum. If you're interesting in learning about the benefits of adopting Agile from a testing perspective, check out this white paper instead. 

Supporting DevOps through Testing

Essential Skills for Test Managers

This is the second in a series of posts on Test Management. If you haven’t had chance to read the first part, you can do so here.

So now you understand the importance of Test Management and the consequences of getting it wrong; but knowing what you should do is only half the story, what about the person who is the Test Manager? What are their qualities to execute good Test Management? This post will highlight the five key attributes of a Test Manager and give a flavour of what your organisation needs to look for when looking to employ personnel within the test management function.

Identifying Common Themes in Scrum Testing

So I get to see lots of different organisations all trying to implement Scrum to varying levels, several themes come out:

Firstly, testers are sometimes excluded from certain activities/events or aren’t given an equal voice in the team. Sometimes they don’t understand that they have an equal voice that needs to be heard. The “Development Team” is supposed to be cross-functional which means that it should have testing or testers in it, don’t get me started on why we decided to call it the “Development” team.

The Impact of Regression Testing: Six Do's and Don't

• “Automated testing is easy using our tool!”
• “You just record your scripts and away you go! No coding is necessary."
• “Using this tool to automate your tests will reduce your costs and head count."

How many times have we sat across the table from tool vendors telling us this?! The truth is, automated regression testing is not easy, it takes the right strategy and planning to give you a fighting chance of getting it right. In our experience of working with clients who have tried to automate their testing, there are a number of common factors that caused them to fail to meet their intended objectives or give them any cost savings.