Hello, I am new to this forum but joined as it looks like a great place to share and gain knowledge for all kinds of testing.
I wanted some advice from Test Managers. I started working at a new company about 6 months ago where they had no formal testing practices and processes or knowledge in house. My job is to develop and embed these processes so that everyone is working in the same way in as efficient way as possible.
This company is very big with a number of departments all working with a large number of systems each, including in house infrastructure etc… I have developed a framework designed to provide information for everyone to understand what will be expected from now on, and a roll out plan for how to accomplish this, I am now developing the test policy / strategy documents and this is where i wanted the advice.
How would you go about designing these? I have done this before for smaller companies but i am getting stuck now with the fact we have so many departments that need to be covered by these documents.
My plan at the moment is to develop an overall test strategy document which details the universal points that everyone needs to follow (sign off procedures, use to test environments and data, expected reporting etc…) and then have a document per department detailing how this strategy is to be tailored to meet their specific needs.
My problem then comes with the many different systems we have. The majority of these run in a BAU fashion with projects run as a separate entity (I plan on having a project test process for every project to follow from start up). In companies with a smaller number of systems i would look at creating approach documents that can be altered per release to bring them in line with new requirements but with this number of systems this is one hell of a job.
Am i approaching this the wrong way? Is this overkill in terms of process? I am looking at 4 or 5 departments, 200+ staff, and 10’s of systems to cover off and need an efficient way to cover all of this effectively.
I look forward to hearing back from anyone who can offer some advice.