Below is an excerpt of our book Testing of Complex and Embedded Systems Pries, K., & Quigley, J. (2011). Chapter 4. In Testing Complex and Embedded Systems (pp. 33-35). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.   Basic Principle of Testing The verification and test group is there to provide some critical and unbiased review of the […]

Qualitative Testing Qualitative tests look for a change in a quality; for example, a color might change. Qualitative tests always involve the use of attributes rather than variables values (e.g., temperature). Consider the Kastle-Meyer test for the presence of blood–an archetype for qualitative forensic testing. The test is impressively quick and functions as a decision […]

In our last blog post, we referred to the APQP  (Advanced Product Quality Planning) activity of DFMEA.  The post was about the attempt to perform late in a project.  The point to the DFMEA in that instance was lost; at best, if we found a serious problem, would be to abort the launch.  The post […]

The blog “Testers Do Not Break the Product” was posted on LinkedIn and there were considerable responses and exchanges.  In an effort to continue that same discourse, I post some of that exchange. Many thought the language “breaking”, as did many others, to be unclear or ambiguous. The language in this discussion originates from the […]

Conventional Project The previous two blogs demonstrated a way to employ agile techniques. At the top level the project was executed as a conventional project.  The project had gates, a steering committee and numerous schedule layers.  The organizational structure is balanced matrix (for the most part).  The organization is distributed both by function and geographic […]

As we execute the test cases, we will likely find failures. These failures or faults will be reported into a reporting system that will allow us to track the failure resolution. We can also use that here in our progress tracking sheet.

Agile in Conventional Project Line Management The following is a story from a couple of years back.  The story is about lengthy set of verification activities (multiple iterations) in a large conventionally run project.  As many a test engineer will relate, testing is always cramped for time. Meaning, the time we want the answers is much […]

Agile Applied to Verification Agile practices can apply to more than just project management approach, or even only to agile projects.  The techniques can help line management functions or used in subsections of projects that are otherwise conventionally developed and executed.  In the next series of blog posts, we will show how these techniques used […]