Designing and Building a Software Test Organization

Designing and building a software test organization can largely be broken down into a set of decision categories and an understanding of the environmental factors which influence those decisions. This paper summarizes the three key strategies which must be addressed (automation strategy, organizational strategy and test strategy) and discusses how various environmental factors such the product domain, the problem domain and the business domain influence those strategies. This paper is based on experience generated building test organizations in a large international software company spanning several technologies and market segments. Additionally, this paper provides general recommendations for each of these decisions and the information required to tailor those decisions to the specific needs of the reader's organization.