Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : software acceptance

Acceptance Test Engineering Guide, volume 1 BETA2 release

gmelnik — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:30:00 GMT

Today I am pleased to announce the release of the beta2 of the first volume of our Acceptance Test Engineering Guide. We are getting closer to “done”.

As it became apparent that the primary reader personas for each part in the original guide (that was released as beta1) were different and the size of the guide was approaching 800 pages, we decided to split it into 3 volumes. It allows us to ship Volume I sooner while finishing Volume II and III. Incremental delivery for the win!

Based on the first round of reviews, Volume I has undergone some serious rewriting (especially, the Gating model, which is now called the Acceptance Process Model) and the entire new chapters were added (Part II – Perspectives on Acceptance).

Here’s the current structure of the guide:

Volume I provides an overview of the acceptance process and how acceptance testing and other key practices fit into the process. This volume is intended to be read from beginning to end. It is subdivided into three main parts:

Part I – Thinking about Acceptance explains six mental models that are useful when thinking about the acceptance process.

Chapter 1 The Acceptance Process
Chapter 2 Decision-Making Model
Chapter 3 Project Context Model
Chapter 4 System Requirements Model
Chapter 5 Risk Model
Chapter 6 Doneness Model

Part II – Perspectives on Acceptance describes the acceptance process from the perspectives of key stakeholders in two different kinds of organizations: the Information Technology Department in a business and the Product Development Company. Most readers involved in the acceptance process should find some commonality with at least one of the roles describes.

Chapter 7 Business Lead’s Perspective
Chapter 8 Product Manager’s Perspective
Chapter 9 Test Manager’s Perspective
Chapter 10 Development Manager’s Perspective
Chapter 11 User Experience Specialist’s Perspective
Chapter 12 Operations Manager’s Perspective
Chapter 13 Solution Architect’s Perspective
Chapter 14 Enterprise Architect’s Perspective
Chapter 15 Legal Perspective

Part III – Accepting Software introduces the practices that are necessary for planning the acceptance process, for performing acceptance testing and for improving the acceptance process.

Chapter 16 Planning for Acceptance
Chapter 17 Assessing Software
Chapter 18 Managing the Acceptance Process
Chapter 19 Streamlining the Acceptance Process

Volume II is a collection of what we call thumbnails that describe the practices introduced in Volume I in more detail. A thumbnail is a short overview of a practice that explains what it is, when you may want to use it, the risks that it mitigates, and an overview of how to perform the practice. Thumbnails also include a list of references to papers, books, and other resources that provide more complete descriptions of the practices in question. The main purpose of a thumbnail is to describe a topic well enough to provide an overview, serve as a mental reminder for someone who has used the practice on how to do it, and give someone unfamiliar with the practice enough information about the practice and its applicability to determine if they want to learn more about it. Some of these topics and practices have entire books written about them that describe the concepts in greater detail and depth than this guide could possibly do. Volume II is intended to be used as a reference; most readers will not read it from beginning to end.

Volume III. This volume is a collection of sample artifacts generated by applying different practices in a fictional but realistic situation for the fictional company Global Bank. These artifacts are embedded in a series of case studies of what the Global Bank team may have produced while building the application. The case studies provide some context to the individual artifacts. They also provide cross-references to the practices described in Volume II. The artifacts are intended to be used as way to learn more about how to perform a practice; they can also be used as templates for your own artifacts.

As always, we look forward to your feedback! Feel free to submit it through the Codeplex site (Issue Tracker or Discussion Forum) or simply email it to me.

News: Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance BETA1

gmelnik — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 03:46:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce the release of the Acceptance Test Engineering guide BETA1. You can download it from http://codeplex.com/TestingGuidance

Common Scenarios Addressed:

How to Plan for Acceptance Testing
What Kinds of Acceptance Tests to Run
How to Create and Run Acceptance Tests
Defining What “Done” Means
How to Justify Your Approach

Contents at a Glance:

PART I – THINKING MODELS: an overview of acceptance testing and explains several models that are useful in conceptual thinking about acceptance testing. It also includes items that are necessary for planning acceptance testing. This part is intended to be read from beginning to end.

PART II – THUMBNAILS: a thumbnail is a short overview of a practice that explains what it is, when you may want to use it, the risks that it mitigates, and an overview of how to perform the practice. Thumbnails also include a list of references to papers, books, and other resources that provide more complete descriptions of the practice in question. The main purpose of a thumbnail is to describe a topic well enough to provide an overview, serve as a mental reminder for someone who has used the practice on how to do it, and give someone unfamiliar with the practice enough information about the practice and its applicability to determine if they want to learn more about it. This part is intended to be used as a reference; most readers will not read it from beginning to end.

PART III – SAMPLES: a collection of sample artifacts generated by applying different practices in a fictional real-world situation for Global Bank. These artifacts are embedded in a series of case studies of what the Global Bank team may have produced while building the application. The case studies provide some context to the individual artifacts. They also provide cross-references to the practices described in Part II. The artifacts are intended to be used as way to learn more about how to perform a practice; they can also be used as templates for your own artifacts.

Webcast

Gerard, Jon and I did a webcast talking about the concepts and the way we are writing this guidance.

Feedback

Your feedback is invited. Please post it under Discussions on Codeplex. Also, if you have an interesting experience with acceptance testing that you’d like to share and perhaps be profiled in our guide as a case study, we’d like to hear about it.

Acceptance Test Engineering guide - How to Decide if Software is Ready for You or Your Customer - Community Preview 2 released

gmelnik — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:32:00 GMT

On Monday, we released our CTP2 on Codeplex: http://codeplex.com/TestingGuidance.

You’ll see it now includes the consumption model and also some recommendations on how to read the guide. There are three parts. Part I. Narratives and Models - this is a short section that is meant to be read end-to-end. This is where we define readiness assessment and acceptance testing and introduce several models that help conceptualize software acceptance. Among other things we discuss decision making process, risk evaluation, the doneness model and its variants for agile and Tayloristic processes. Part II consists of what we refer to as “Thumbnails”. Those are the short descriptions of various useful practices that also provide information on their applicability, risks addressed, implementation options and additional resources. The Thumbnails are complemented by the actual samples (Part III) that we’ve produced on a sample system (Global Bank). Both thumbnails and samples are meant to be used as references and in any order.

You’ll notice there are still a number of empty sections. If you see an empty section, assume we will fill in the section before we complete the book.

Please provide it by posting a reply to the corresponding thread under Discussions on codeplex or as a reply to this blog post.

Happy reading! We look forward to your feedback!