How is test management done by the test director?

If you are familiar with all the concepts of the test director you can apply them to your software systems or applications since you know how it works.

The test director implements the test management via four major phases as mentioned below:

1. Specification of the requirements
2. Planning the tests
3. Execution of the tests
4. Tracking the defects

Throughout each of the phases the date can be analyzed by the detailed reports and graphs generated earlier. Firstly, you need to analyze your software system or application and determine all of your testing requirements. 

Phase I - specification of Requirements

The first phase of the test director test management process involves the following steps:

1. Examination of the documentation of the software system or application for the determining the testing scope i.e., test goals, strategies, objectives etc.
2. Building of a requirements tree for defining overall testing requirements.
3. Creation of a list of detailed testing requirements for each topic mentioned in the requirements tree.
4. Writing a description for each requirement, assigning a priority level to it and adding attachments if required.
5. Generation of the reports and graphs for providing assistance in the analyzation of the testing requirements.
6. Carrying out a review of the requirements to check if they meet the specifications.

Phase II - Planning the Tests

The second phase involves the following tasks:

1. Examination of the application, testing resources and system requirement for determining the test goals.
2. Division of the application in to modules to be tested and building of a test plan tree to divide the application in to testing units hierarchically.
3. Determination of the type of tests that are required for each module and adding a basic definition of each test to the test plan tree.
4. Linking each test to the corresponding testing requirement.
5. Developing manual tests where each test step describes the test operations and expected outcome. Deciding which tests are to be automated.
6. Creation of the test scripts for the tests that are to be automated using a custom testing tool such as mercury interactive testing tools.
7. Generation of the graphs and reports for the analyzation of the test planning data.
8. Reviewing the tests for determining their suitability to the testing goals.

Phase III - Execution of tests

Third phase involves the following activities:

1. Defining the tests in to groups so as to meet various testing goals of the project. This may involve testing a new version of the application or a specific function in it.
2. Deciding which all tests are to be included in the test set.
3. Scheduling the execution of the tests and assigning tasks to different application testers.
4. Execution of the tests either manually or automatically.
5. Viewing the results of the test runs for determining if a detect was detected in the application under test and generation of the reports and graphs for analyzation of the results.

Phase IV - Tracking the Defects

The last phase of the test management i.e., defect tracking involves the following activities:

1. Submitting new defects detected in the software system or application. Defects can be added during any phase by QA testers, project managers and developers etc.
2. Carrying out a review of the new defects and determining which ones are to be fixed.
3. Correcting the defects that were decided to be fixed.
4. Testing the new build of the software system or application and repeating the whole process until all the defects are fixed.
5. Generation of the graphs and reports to provide assistance in the analyzation of the progress of the defect fixes and determining the date when the application is to be released.