Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement, ...

Most complete source of SW quality info in one place:
This book represents the most complete and comprehensive approach to total quality of any I've read on either software testing or software quality assurance. Highlights include: - A structured quality cycle based on Plan-Do-Check-Act. This cycle is the foundation of continuous improvement, which is the theme of the book. - Complete description of testing techniques - in this respect the book is an encyclopedia for software test professionals and a definitive reference. - Comprehensive resource for forms and checklists (I wish these were also provided in soft copy on a CD ROM or author's web site, but they are not). - Full view of metrics across every aspect of the development life cycle. In the same manner that the testing techniques are encyclopedic, the metrics are also an encyclopedia for SQA professionals. I've used this book as a reference, and it had a heavy influence on a reference chart a colleague and I developed for depicting life cycle key metrics. It does not confine itself to testing alone, and in fact, has something for production services and service delivery professionals, as well as project managers involved with large scale development and implementation projects. You would have to buy at least a dozen books or download thousands of documents off the Internet to get the information contained between the covers of this book.

Perfect balance of information and techniqies:
You'd have to download over a gigabyte of internet resources, then cross-reference them to come anywhere close to having a resource as valuable as this book. Lewis has taken proven techniques spanning both software testing and SQA, wrapped them into a quality process based on the PDCA model and places all of the information you need to master testing and SQA between the covers of this outstanding book. All you need to add is the ability to think. If you can do that you'll be able to transform the incredible amount of information in this book into action. If you do that I guarantee you that you'll be able to develop a world class quality organization. Of course, you can mine the publicly available resources and sort through them. Before you do, think carefully about how much your time is worth and just how much you can absorb. If you're intelligent enough to understand this book, you'll quickly see that you'll save thousands of manhours. If not, you still need this book because approach will make you think in terms of cost/benefit. The forms and checklists in this book alone are worth many times the price.

The worst textbook I have ever purchased:
Don't believe any of the positive reviews. This is a horrible book. The material is very scattered and incoherent, and it is incredibly repetitive. Virtually complete paragraphs are repeated at different points throughout the book. The book reads more like a poorly written report than a textbook. In fact, like a report, the book is composed of "sections" and "parts", where a section corresponds to what would normally be a part in a regular textbook, and a part corresponds to what you would normally call a chapter. The author devotes an entire chapter (sorry, "part") to discussing software testing in a spiral development environment, yet makes no mention of agile development methodologies or test-driven development. For a book that was published as recently as 2005, this is an unacceptable omission. The book's index is anemic. The index entries under the letter 'I' include "In God we trust" (a reference to an irrelevant comment in the introduction) but makes no mention of "Integration Testing". In a book about software testing, this is absolutely ridiculous. The level of detail in the book is also very inconsistent. Take the appendices as an example. Most of the appendices are less than a single page in length. There is one illustrative example of a software program that is used repeatedly throughout many of the appendices. The program is a primitive little example sketched out in about a dozen lines of pseudocode. You won't find any real-world source code in this book. Then, you have appendix G11, which includes a detailed introduction to relational databases for the absolute beginner. This was a very sudden and drastic change of pace, from glossing over all technical details and forgoing any discussion of real-world technologies, into a full-fledged tutorial. For an example of the kind of meaningless drivel you'll read in Lewis' book, take a look at this paragraph from page 253: "Of the various activities in the project plan, planning and execution are the key activities that determine the cost of resources and schedules required for the testing projects. During these two crucial phases of testing, various key deliverables are estimated. This will ensure that the test team will have a focused approach and the delivery of the deliverables will come to a logical end so that the project can proceed with the next task in the plan." If this makes any sense to you at all, then I congratulate you for mastering the fine art of semantic and syntactic redundancy while delivering virtually no value to the reader. A bright career in consulting awaits you.

If you only have one book on testing and QA this is it!:
I have used the 1st edition for years as my primary Test & QA reference. Being a fan of Dr. Demming, this book supports his teaching. Mr. Lewis's book provides many pracical examples and templates for the QA practitioner, be they a seasoned pro or someone just thrown into Testing for the first time.

Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement 2nd Ed. Lewis:
Very poorly structured and poorly written book. It seems outdated considering it centers around the Waterfall development method. Unfortunately, this book was a requirement for my course, otherwise I would return it. It is by far the worst text book I have had to read in my studies. A note to prospective buyers: Keep in mind that (almost) all the positive reviews are over 6 years old and the negative reviews are recent. A lot seems to have happened in software development methodologies (including SQA) since that time! Hopefully, the forthcoming third edition is better but it requires a serious re-write.