Fundamentals of Testing

Test Monitoring and Test Control are two activities that work together. Once Monitoring identifies any blocker that stops a test cycle from fulfilling its objectives, Control activities will have to come into play to ensure necessary actions are taken to eliminate the bottleneck.

Test Monitoring and Control is primarily a Test Manager or Leader activity. However, other test team members contribute to this activity by gathering and calculating the metrics, which will eventually be used for Monitoring and control.

Test Monitoring 

Test monitoring applies the continuous comparison of actual progress against planned progress using any test monitoring metrics. Monitoring works by comparing the present status of testing-related tasks against a documented plan and evaluating whether the process delivers the expected outcomes. Monitoring information can be collected manually or automatically to measure exit criteria, such as coverage. 

Metrics used in Test Monitoring

• Test Coverage Metric
• Test Execution Metric
• Defect Metric
• Requirement Traceability Metric
• Project Cost Metric
• Project Resource Metric
• Task Schedule Metric

Test Monitoring Activities

• Test monitoring aims to collect data and provide feedback and visibility about test activities to the QA team and stakeholders.Convey the results of testing performed to the associated members.
• Identify and Track the Test Metrics.
• Plan, Estimate, and Decide the future course of action based on Metrics.

Test Control 

Test control involves taking actions necessary to meet the objectives of the test plan based on the results of Test Monitoring. Test control describes any guiding or corrective actions taken from information and metrics gathered and reported. Test Control is essentially modifying the testing process so that it becomes better suited for meeting the defined objectives.

Test Control Activities

• Re Prioritize Test Cases and Prioritize Efforts when risk such as late software delivery occurs.
• Change in Test Schedule due to availability and unavailability of environment and resources. 
• Re-evaluating whether a test item meets an entry or exit criterion due to rework
• Re-considering the test exit criteria.