• Test Planning - We help project teams determine and document the unit testing, system testing, performance testing, and acceptance testing that will validate the product quality.
• Test Plan Review - Maxsam Partners reviews your projects' test plan and provides recommendations for improving the test coverage and effectiveness.
• Inspection Implementation Coaching - We will lead your team through inspections of your project artifacts to ensure they learn how to conduct high quality inspections.
• Unit Testing Implementation - Our technical experts work with teams to implement effective and efficient unit testing.
• We can increase the productivity of your team by finding and fixing issues early in the development cycle thus reducing downstream rework and effort.

Test Planning
Maxsam Partners helps teams determine the unit testing, system testing, performance testing, and acceptance testing that will validate the product quality. Common focuses of test planning include:

• Creating an overall strategy for testing including developer unit testing, automated testing, system testing, and performance testing.
• Developing an estimate for the test effort
• Identifying test specific risks and assets
• Determining the coverage goals that will best meet your needs and how testing will help validate them
• We'll work with your project team to create a plan that specifies when testing should occur, how testing will be performed, what deliverables will be created to capture the testing effort, and how test progress will be reported to the team.

Test Plan Review
A solid test plan outlines the testing necessary on the project and the approach that will be taken to ensure effective testing. Maxsam Partners experts will review your existing test plan and provide feedback on ways to ensure your testing coverage meets the project's goals. Common issues a test plan review identifies include:

• Coverage and other project specific test goals have not been identified
• An overall test strategy that includes unit testing, integration testing, independent system testing, and automation testing has not been established
• Best practices such as equivalence classes are not being used
• The test automation strategy is not well defined
• A well thought out plan ensures your testing effort efficiently identifies defects early in the lifecycle and verify the system is meet the desired quality level.

Inspection Coaching
Of all the forms of reviews, formal inspections yield the highest return on investment. Industry reports quote formal inspections as having a return-on-investment of more than 10 to 1. This means that every person-hour spent in up-front technical reviews has been shown to save at least 10 hours of avoided downstream rework. Once your inspection participants have be trained in the process, Maxsam Partners quality experts can help ensure the team understands the process and are ready to deploy them in your environment. Maxsam Partners inspection coaching includes the following activities:

• Preparation Assistance. We'll work with your inspection moderator to select the deliverable to be inspected, assemble inspection packets, conduct the inspection kickoff, and confirm that all participants are ready of the inspection.
• Inspection Observation. Maxsam Partners will sit in on or more inspections. We'll summarize the current strengths and weaknesses of your process along with specific recommendations for improvement. Our coaching results in a specific actionable plan to increase the effectiveness of your inspections.
• By using inspections effectively in your organization you can eliminate unnecessary rework on your software projects, leading to higher quality products being delivered sooner and with less cost. Maxsam Partners can help your team understand and deploy inspections.