Many IT management executives and IT Budget planners of late have stopped getting Testing project budgetary requests. Instead, there are requests to setup Testing Center of Excellence (TCOE). So, ‘what is the difference between testing as a project versus testing under a Testing Center of Excellence? How does one evaluate the ‘excellence’ part of TCOE and what are the benefits that one needs to expect as a customer paying for a TCOE or procuring it’s service?’ The session will help the participants by answering these questions in the context of a Performance Testing Center of Excellence.  It will also serve as useful guide to organizations looking to setup or enhance the maturity level of their Performance Testing Center of Excellence

 

I plan to cover following in the conference.

 

           1. Why establish a performance test COE:

Reasons are provided to centralize the performance testing resources and activity to a single group instead of spreading it out to every project. Understanding the imperatives behind establishing a Performance COE is important. These imperatives are later visited in the evaluation criteria discussions on how to verify, if the TCOE is delivering promised goods.

          2. Current Performance TCOE practices and shortcomings:

Performance Test Center of Excellence as the name signifies large group of skilled resources focused on one aspect of testing. However, aspects of excellence are not necessarily enshrined or reflected in the group objectives, processes and deliverables. Often the deliverables quality is not consistent. The key areas such as of incorrect sizing of test environment are not addressed and advanced techniques such as of work-load modeling are not in place. The key trick missed is the art of converting work volume to excellence because every work presents opportunity to learn and improve.

 

3. Proposed Performance Testing and Performance Test COE maturity model

Maturity model is proposed for Performance Testing and Performance Test COE. The two are placed side by side to distinguish performance Test COE from Performance Testing. It would be demonstrated how a mature Performance Test COE can help achieve maturity in Performance Testing. It would also serve to demonstrate additional objectives and tasks for Performance Test COE that are not applicable for a Performance test project. 

 

             4. Evaluating a Performance Testing Center of Excellence

Following evaluation criteria shall be used for the Performance Test CoE.

 

             a. Group objectives and vision

             b. Deliverable Quality

             c. Processes

             d. People

             e. Customer satisfaction and Business alignment

             f. Project management

             g. Innovation and Knowledge management

             h. Integration

             i. Financial management

 

5.   Applicability of maturity model and evaluation methodology to Test Automation and Usability testing.