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Automated Software Testing : Introduction, management and performance

Author:

Elfriede Dustin
Jeff Rashka
John Paul

Publisher

Addison-Wesley

Published

2000

Edition

1

Pages

575

Target Audience

Management

Contents

Part 1 - What is automated testing
Part 2 - Introduction of automated testing to a project
Part 3 - Test planning and preparation
Part 4 - Test execution an review
Appendix A - How to test requirements
Appendix B - Tools
Appendix C - Test Engineer Development
Appendix D - Sample Test Plan
Appendix E - Best Practices

Sometimes testing is made to seem like such a dull, dry, plodding subject. I assume that's because this book is aimed at a dull plodding manager. This book will certainly improve their approach to automation but I don't think it will really help the working environment for their poor testers.

Having said that, it is not all bad, in fact it isn't really bad at all. Don't read it as a book, read it as a reference manual. Skim the padding (that isn't padding, that's just a big example). It can't be your primary test bible but it might work for you.

When I had finished the primary text in the book I was quite surprised to read Appendix A. The style had lightened and I was enjoying the text, but it was written by someone else (Suzanne Robertson - fully credited). This strategy confused me, the book had already gone through requirements testing but presumably the authors did not want to repeat something that someone else had said somewhere else. Well why not, it didn't stop them anywhere else in the book.

Is this a book about testing, about automated testing, or about the introduction and control of automated testing? I don't know, I get the feeling that you bought an automation expert and got a jack of all trades.

And so we turn to the CD, always an added bonus in development books, how exciting to find one in a testing book. Oh, pdf versions of table 3.2, appendix b and appendix d. If you are using the book and find it valuable then this might be worthwhile, but why not just provide an electronic version of the entire book? But the front cover stresses that the CD-ROM includes the Automated Test Lifecycle Methodology, where might that be? Well, we do get a folder with 4 pictures in it, well one picture in 4 different formats - jpg, tif, gif and pdf (but the pdf didn't open in acrobat for some reason). This is the picture on page 9 which summaries the 5 stages of the ATLM. Now you can leave the CD-Rom unopened and get a better price for the book on the second hand market.

Perhaps the book will save you some internet time from tracking down information on the various test tools presented.

Again though, it isn't all bad. It does have a lot of pointers to other places, the appendices are detailed, if you are working from scratch and have never written a test plan then do read this book. If you don't know much about the tools available then this book has a list.

I may be wrong, this book seems to be a very popular choice. Perhaps I will try and read it again, sometime in the future, but not soon.

The book does however have some interesting links, but of course they are in the text rather than on the CD so you have to type them in by hand.