Saturday, November 29, 2008

Open System Thinking and Software Testing (8)

This is a continuation of the posting in the category: Open System Thinking and Software Testing. For the previous post you might check out: Open System Thinking and Software Testing (7)

For defining the items and investigation of the relations of those items to each other I'm still working on Micro Level: Test Project. (See Open System Thinking and Software Testing (1) )

As mentioned in the previous posting the same steps can be followed.
1. Define the general meanings of the categories on meso level;
2. Identify the items per category: Goals, Technology, Culture and Structure;
3. Fill in the quadrants;
4. Define how the items are weakening or supporting each other;
5. Defining the sentences how this empowering/weakening is done;
6. Defining possible solutions how to monitor or to define new improvement suggestions

To define the focus of general meanings of categories you have to consider the basis of an organization: Vision, Mission, Strategy and Objectives.


Based on a vision of one or more persons a mission is defined. That mission is the goal of an organization. To comply to this mission a strategy is developed. To meet that strategy objectives are defined. If one of these objectives are not yet met often they are mentioned in business cases which will be the basis of a project.

I think we need to make a decision. To use this model you can use two approaches.
1. Define the basic context (general meanings) and after performing the defined steps you create heuristics which you want to act on
2. Start defining heuristics and use them as basis to perform the steps.

For more information related to heuristics I want to refer to documentation and weblogs from James Bach, Michael Bolton, Cem Kaner and Brett Pettichord

Documentation:
Brett Pettichord: Schools of Software Testing
The Seven Basic Principles of the Context-Driven School
James Bach, Rapid Software Testing
James Bach, Rapid Software Testing Appendices

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