Foreword from the authors
TMap NEXT® for result-driven testing, Sogeti’s complete test approach,
appeared in 2006, and has now been published in English, Dutch, German
and French. The Business Driven Test Management (BDTM)
approach is an important essential of the book. BDTM is embedded
throughout the method, making it difficult at times to find all of the ‘ins’
and ‘outs’ of BDTM in the book. We have therefore decided to write an
additional book to clarify and elaborate BDTM for two target groups:
- Clients
- Test Managers
The importance of the contribution of IT to businesses is constantly growing
and organisations continue to increase their expenditure on IT. Some
take the initiative of improving the justification of the IT contribution to
the business goals. Others are forced to do so by new regulations (especially
regarding IT Governance). The decision-making process in relation
to the investment of resources in particular can be significantly improved.
One success factor is an optimal relationship and coherence between the
various control processes. In short, professional IT management is
required if an IT organisation is to make a maximum contribution to
realising the business goals.
Clearly such professional management is also necessary for test management!
After all, test costs amount to 30-50% of the total costs of a project.
In maintenance projects, they may even represent 80% of the total project
costs! And in addition to these costs, companies must also take account of
the costs of possible failure of software. Although a lot of research has been
done on the financial consequences of failing software, many organisations
still underestimate the risks and consequences of software defects. As
such, it is extremely important to devote explicit attention to Test Governance
within the scope of IT Governance. We believe that the Business
Driven Test Management approach is an excellent way to handle Test
Governance.
This book also offers a summary introduction to the book TMap NEXT for
result-driven testing in chapter 1-Introduction, 2-The Framework and
Importance of Testing, and 3-The Essentials of TMap. Please refer to
www.tmap.net for the most recent publications.
Three of the four authors of TMap NEXT for Result Driven Testing were not
involved in the creation of this book: Tim Koomen, Bart Broekman and
Michiel Vroon. We remain very grateful for their contribution to TMap NEXT. We have continued on their path by perfecting and describing the
BDTM approach in detail.
Books like this are seldom written exclusively by the authors. So we would
like to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who have contributed
to the content of this book:
Erwin Allers, Eric Begeer, John Bloedjes,
Wendy Hesta, Conrad Horsten, Ralph Klomp,
Rob Kuijt, Willem-Jan van der Meer, Gerrit Mudde,
Guido Nelissen, Andréas Prins, Marc Roekens,
Mark Rumpf, Willem Sloot, Gert Stad,
Thomas Veltman, Gerrit de Vries.
Our Sogeti colleague Clare Argent was of great help in indicating
improvements to the English language.
This book could not have been published without the assistance of Sogeti
Nederland B.V.’s Software Control management team; we are particularly
grateful to Nijs Blokland and Marc Valkier.
We have worked on this book with great enthusiasm. We feel that implementing
the BDTM approach correctly means achieving the optimal balance
between cost and time investment on the one hand and the expected
result and the risks covered on the other. We think this book will interest a
great many people, but we believe that clients in development and test
processes, the line management, test managers and test coordinators in
particular will be inspired by this work.
Leo van der Aalst
Rob Baarda
Ewald Roodenrijs
Johan Vink
Ben Visser
Rik Marselis (Project Leader)
Vianen, October 2008