Your test strategy is the design behind your plan—the set of big-picture ideas that embodies the overarching direction of your test effort. It captures the stakeholders’ values that will inspire, influence, and ultimately drive your testing. It guides your overall decisions about the ways and means of delivering on those values. The weighty test strategy template mandated in many organizations is not conducive to thinking through the important elements of a test strategy and then communicating its essentials to your stakeholders. A lightweight medium like a mindmap is far more flexible and direct. In this interactive session Fiona Charles works with you to develop your own strategic ideas in a mindmap, exploring along the way what really matters in a test strategy and how best to capture it using a mindmap. Fiona shares tips on how to use your mindmap to engage your stakeholders’ interest, understanding, and buy-in to your strategy.

1. Workshop :
Using a Mindmap to Develop
a Test Strategy
Fiona Charles
STARCanada
April 11, 2013

2. A Test Strategy is the set of big-picture
ideas embodying the overarching
direction or design of a test effort.
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 2

3. “Quality is value to some person or persons.”
Gerald M. Weinberg
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 3

4. A test strategy includes:
Significant values that will inspire, influence and
ultimately drive your testing
Stakeholders’ values = product/project business goals
What quality means to stakeholders in practical terms
Overall decisions you have made about ways and
means of:
delivering on those values (translated for testing)
addressing the major constraints and risks affecting your
testing
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 4

5. Who are your stakeholders?
Who is paying for this system?
Who expects to benefit from implementation of
this system?
If something goes wrong with this system, who
could suffer harm or loss?
Of these, whose interests are most significant to
include or represent in your test strategy?
Don’t forget the development team and other IT
stakeholders
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 5

6. Are there silent or absent stakeholders
who could be significantly impacted?
• Anonymous customers
• Your customer’s customers
• Bystanders
You may need to ensure their interests are
represented
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 6

7. Strategy vs. Tactics
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8. In military terms:
There are four levels of warfighting- Policy, Strategy,
Operations, and Tactics. Strategy is the marriage
between the political ends and the military means.
Tactics, to give a boiled-down definition, is what is
done when in combative contact with the enemy- the
manuevers, attacks, timing, etc…
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 8

9. To elucidate with an historical example – In WWII, the
policy was the unconditional surrender of Nazi
Germany. One of the strategies to achieve that policy
was to knock out the German industrial capacity
through aerial bombing runs. (Probably rather an
operation) There were many operations, or organized
collections of missions, meant to ensure that the
bombing strategy was successful. The tactics involved
in the operations include the decision to bomb at
night, non-evasive flying to increase the accuracy of
the bombing, and dogfighting manuevers by the
fighter escorts.
From Augean Stables blog
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 9

10. Marketing example (Arm & Hammer):
Business Goal: Turn the tide and increase Baking Soda
sales.
Strategy: Devise new reasons for their current customers
to pick up that yellow box at the supermarket and use
more baking soda. Specifically, sell Arm & Hammer as a
deodorizer for the fridge.
That’s a big, strategic idea that led Arm & Hammer in a
completely different direction. They’re now marketing a
whole line of environmentally friendly cleaning products.
Every current Arm & Hammer product, from toothpaste
to cat litter, originated with that strategy of finding new
ways to use baking soda. And in the process, an oldfashioned brand has managed to stay relevant.
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 10

11. Tactics: TV advertising. Magazine ads. Infomercials.
Retail promotions. Website dedicated to all the
various uses of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. All the
traditional marketing tactics were employed.
John Furgurson
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 11

12. Test Strategy vs. Military
A Test Strategy incorporates the Operations
level as well as the Strategy level.
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 12

13. Example of a Mindmapped Test
Strategy
Mindmapped Test Strategy_Fiona Charles.mm
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 13

14. You can see an image of the
entire mindmap:
http://tinyurl.com/br4lyww
Using a Mindmap to Develop a Test Strategy 14

15. Fiona Charles
fiona.charles@quality-intelligence.com
www.quality-intelligence.com
Twitter: @FionaCCharles
Images and text ©Fiona Charles 2013