Chapter 6. Quality Control of Software Products
There is no need to agonize over what might have been forgotten, because quality assurance (Control) keeps track of everything. There is no need to worry about what surprises may come from a user's acceptance test, or from the first few months in the field, because quality assurance (Control) has savaged the system more than any user ever could, and done it in privacy, where the consequences are merely extra work rather than litigation.
Putting This Chapter in Perspective
One of the crucial aspects of quality assurance is testing, or quality control. Software testing has always been a challenge because the product being tested is not a physical product built on an assembly line. In the engineering domain, quality control results in accepting or rejecting a manufactured product—in software it's more often the case of correcting than rejecting. While the process aspect of testing was put together in the quality-control process-component in Chapter 3, here we cover the theory and practice of testing in far greater detail. The topics discussed in this chapter include various types of testing approaches (for example, black versus white box, and automated versus manual), testing architecture (encompassing unit, component, system, acceptance, and regression tests), test planning, test scripts, test execution, and test results collation.
The Prime Reader: Quality Manager, Test Manager, Developer, Tester