Testing Strategy & Management

One opportunity that stands out in my mind as a rewarding challenge was when I took over as the testing strategy and project management lead for an enterprise client at Testlio. During this time, I was able to reduce test case turnaround times by 20% while optimizing workflows and coordinating team-wide deadlines/tasks across 6 time zones for 7 concurrent products under test.

This client focused on regression, feature, and localization testing of 17 language/locale combinations, which gave me unprecedented experience with leading such a wide variety of testing types. It also taught me the importance of developing risk-based strategies to communicate possibilities/limitations without over-promising.

Setup & context

Before I inherited the testing strategy and project management leadership for the team, this particular client was on a POC contract with limited scope. After they upgraded to a full contract with my company, they introduced a number of new products for us to test.

However, the team was not yet able to handle all the requests, so I was brought on to overhaul, organize, and lead the team's documentation, planning, implementation, and testing strategies. I was also recruited to manage test case development and delivery timelines to keep the client satisfied while we built out the team.

The challenge & problem PROCESS

With seven products and 17 languages/locales to cover, we had to prioritize because all 119 scenarios could not be covered equally. We were also facing severe scope creep the more products were added to the client's request list (which came with the risk of bloated test suites).

Despite the increasing number of products added to the team's plate, our tester pool growth was fairly limited due to strict language/locale combinations and the team was small.

In the past, the team spent approximately equal time on all languages and locales when the client had only one or two products under test. However, that was clearly no longer appropriate as the project grew in size.

To solve this issue, I worked closely with the client to identify priority, impact, and risk while also setting expectations for expected recruitment and testing timelines. After a very productive discussion, I used the following to assign tasks and test case generation/review by graded importance in my project management tool:

1. Testing strategy documentation

2. Business priority assignments

3. Existing defect severity level assignments

4. Impact analysis

5. Client feedback

Launch, impact, results

The client was very pleased with our assessments and recommendations regarding the planned trajectory of testing. Because our test plans for each product were created based on the amount of effort assigned (rather than precedence), we were able to correct course early and avoid bloated testing suites in the face of so many products and localization requirements. This led to a 20% reduction in test case turnaround times from the first half of the year.

In addition to the test case turnaround time optimization, I focused on efficient workflows and coordinating team-wide deadlines and tasks with our limited resources. My project management purview spanned 6 time zones for all seven products, and we were able to meet all deadlines with ease once revised expectations/goals were established with the client.