Partial Content from Chapter 1: Why you should read this book As an executive, it is your job to set the strategic direction for your company to succeed in the marketplace. You need to set strategies for marketing, sales, R&D, finance, IT, human resources, and support services. In a software company, test strategies are as essential to business success as software development strategies. Despite their importance, most companies lack explicit software test strategies and frequently suffer from poor product quality and release schedule adherence. This book was written to highlight the critical issues associated with software testing and quality assurance that impact the effectiveness of your company's executive staff and bottom line, and to share a strategy that can improve them. An effective test strategy can do this by improving the visibility into the quality of your company's products, so that you can make better management decisions, lower your testing costs, and accelerate your time to market. No matter your role, we suggest that you read chapter 1. If you are a CEO, COO, or on the executive team, you should also read chapter 6. Browsing the other chapters gives you more information on testing issues, but is not necessary. If you are a CFO, you should read chapters 3, 4, and 5. Browsing chapter 6 is suggested. If you are the VP of Engineering or responsible for testing in your company, we highly recommend that you spend time on chapter 6. You might also find chapters 2-5 useful. Summary Software testing should have its own budget and be properly funded because it is: A service to the company to help it produce and release higher quality software products. A service to the development team to help it produce higher quality code. An information service to the executive to provide visibility into the software product quality and enable more effective management. An enabler to help you sleep better at night. Driving toward the solution In the rest of this book, we discuss the following: An overview of software testing The pitfalls of manual software testing and some suggestions for improvement The pitfalls of software test automation and some suggestions for improvement The pitfalls of outsourcing/offshoring and some suggestions for improvement The Global Test Automation strategy Case studies and quotes from experience in these areas