7 Establishing and implementing a testing strategy

There is a saying that nearly every tester has said at some point in their career: you can’t test everything. Constraints such as budgets, deadlines, complexity, skillsets, and more can impact the amount of time we have to test and to learn. There is never enough time to test. To counter this, we need to be strategic about what we test and what we don’t.

Throughout part 2 of this book, we’ve explored a range of different testing activities that focus on different areas of the software development life cycle and on different types of risks, but our discussions around putting together a testing strategy have been abstract. How do we determine what testing activities take priority and what steps we need to take to execute our strategy successfully? What works for one project might not work for another; therefore, in this chapter, we’ll explore why there is no one-size-fits-all strategy and the steps we need to take to identify our test strategy and begin implementing it.

7.1 Establishing a strategy for our context

7.1.1 Identifying what’s a priority

7.1.2 Different strategies for different contexts

7.2 Turning a testing strategy into a testing plan

7.2.1 Understanding your context’s testability

7.2.2 Organizing and documenting a plan

7.2.3 Executing and reflecting on a plan

7.2.4 Evolving our strategy

Summary