Option A: Critical Analysis
Study the overview of QA activities in Part I
(Ch.1-5, but particularly Chapter 3 and general
information from Chapters 13-16 in Part III)
of our textbook,
review the state-of-practice of quality assurance and testing in your
current or former company,
and write a short essay to
- summarize the current/previous practice,
including the quality views/perspectives/definitions,
testing and QA techniques used and activities performed,
defect handling process,
testing and QA activity management,
automation tools used, etc.,
- analyze its strength and weakness areas,
and
- discuss possible improvements.
You should focus on QA/testing,
not general software process or management issues.
In addition, if you think this will be linked to your course project,
some preliminary ideas (particularly, what's new
for your course project) should be discussed too.
(This is probably more appropriate for software professionals.
However, if you don't feel comfortable discussing the practices
at your company, you may choose the second option below.)
Option B:
If you do not have too much to report in the "practice" part,
or if you don't feel comfortable discussing the QA practice at
your current/former company due to confidentiality
or other reasons,
you can do one of the following:
-
Perform a thorough individual study based on detailed documents
describing QA/testing practices in a company or an organization,
and write an essay similar to the above for this company
(instead of your own company).
-
Select a chapter from Ch.13-16,
or related papers or book chapters on similar topics,
and write your own summary of the chapter/paper.
See the online list of related
books for additional reference.
(This is probably more appropriate for full-time students.
Please make sure it is your own summary, based on your understanding
of the subject after reading/studying, not the abstract, summary, or similar things directly from the original source you have just studied.)
You summary/essay should be around 3 double-spaced pages.