PerfTestPlus Services
Overview:
PerfTestPlus offers advising and consulting services, training, and free resources that bring software testing expertise and thought-leadership to organizations seeking to push their testing beyond "state-of-the-practice" to "state-of-the-art.” Our testing services are designed and delivered by name-brand testing professionals who subscribe to our integrity driven, value focused philosophy.
In addition to testing services, PerfTestPlus offers a variety of general software support services. Each of these services are based on the individual expertise and interests of our staff. Generally speaking, our software support services are shorter duration than our testing services and can often be designed as fixed price contracts, making them easy to budget for.
Testing Services:
PerfTestPlus provides a variety of software testing professional services to companies that develop, purchase, use and/or evaluate software. Our consultants include industry recognized experts who typically deliver services within their specialty area. We think about our services in terms of five categories Advise, Consult, Educate, Mentor and Support.
Advise Test Managers and Executives:
We will provide an expert to assess and advise you on various aspects of your software testing process, practice, management, effectiveness and/or goals. Our experts have a wealth of client experiences and are believers in Context-Driven testing.
Consult with Testing Teams & Projects:
Our staff provides software testing consulting services that defy the near ubiquitous notion that consultants “come in, look around, tell you what you already know and expect to get paid for it.” PerfTestPlus consultants believe that it is our role to provide expertise that you lack or don’t have access to. We believe that in most cases, we should start adding value on day one.
Educate & Coach Software Testers & Managers:
We only use instructors who are expert practitioners trained in teaching software testing. Our training is designed to be thought provoking and interactive. Rather than instructing you in our favorite technique or approach and calling it a "best practice", Our instructors provide you with the tools and methods you need to resolve your challenges and improve your techniques. While we may present you with new approaches and techniques, only you can decide what is really best in your context.
Mentor Software Testers & Managers:
Different people learn diferently. Some people prefer to be taken out of their day to day routine and have concepts presented to them that they can go back and apply in their own way. Some like to read theory, some to watch videos and others to simply be instructed how to solve particular problems. Mentoring is for those who like to learn by doing, those who get the most out of simultaneous presentation and application of skills and theories in an immediately relevant environment.
Support Test Groups:
Our team has a broad range of tester skills that they can bring to your organization when what you really need is someone to suppliment your team for a short time. Our support services are valuable to you because you know that you are getting highly qualified, name-brand services that you can count on. We get value out of providing support services because it broadens our experience and keeps us current with "life in the trenches".
Testing Focus Areas:
Within each of our core services, we have identified several focus areas that align with the expertise of our consultants. While there is no requirement or presumption that your project fit into just one focus area - or even that it fit into a combination of them - we have found that these focus areas serve as effective conversation starters and useful tools to help us match our expertise with projects that will most benefit from that expertise.
Load, Stress and Performance Testing:
For simplicity, we refer to this broad category of testing as "Performance Related Testing". We have a different focus than most other companies that offer a performance testing service. For example; our only testing tool preference is that we have access to an adequate tool; we follow an approach that starts and ends with the end user, but focuses on the system and it's sub-systems in the middle; we value intuitive presentations of data; and we believe strongly in collaborative testing and tuning teams.
Testing Software Functionality:
Our perception of functionality testing is "when people use this software, will it serve the purpose that it was designed to serve and will it meet their needs and expectations?" We have expertise in a wide variety of approaches to helping you answer those questions; ranging from highly scripted, automated regression testing to freestyle, pair-wise exploratory testing. We believe that testing is a "scientific art" that is most effective when approached by a team with diverse experiences, complimentary areas of specialization and testing toolkits full of training, ideas, tools, utilities and people to call when things stop making sense.
Computer Assisted Testing:
We are not a reseller for any software testing tools. We do not have partnerships with any tool vendors. We do not advertise for any tools that cost our client money. That is because we don't believe that there is a universal best tool (other than your brain) for any aspect of software testing. We have experience with an amazing number of free, pay and home-grown software testing tools. We can help you use the ones you have, we can help you choose the one that's right for you. We can put you in contact with others who are using the test tool you have in a similar way, but at the end of the day, whatever test tool you choose/use, we probably have someone on staff or know someone who can help you make that tool sing.
Training Testers:
A top tester isn't just someone who can find bugs. A top tester isn't even just someone who can develop a strategy to find bugs and lead a team in executing that strategy. Top testers have amazingly diverse skill sets that all contribute to their testing effectiveness. We can help testers develop and/or enhance their skills.
Testing Strategy and Management:
Everyone seems to want some kind of process improvement, but what kind? Agile? RUP? CMMI? Scrum? ISO9001? XP? IEEE829? MilSpec? There has to be a correct one... doesn't there? Sound familiar? Need someone to decipher all those acronyms? Better yet, would you like someone to help you build a process that actually makes sense for *your* team? These are all things we would be more than happy to help you with.
Software Develoment Support Services:
We offer a variety of general software support services based on the individual expertise and interests of our consultants. Generally speaking, our software support services are shorter duration than our testing services and can often be designed as fixed price contracts making them easy to budget for.
Software Utility Development:
Throughout our careers, we have written a variety of utilities to make our jobs as testers, developers, analysts and managers easier. Some of these utilities have made it into the opensource community, some are still in use by the clients we developed them for and others are collecting virtual dust on our hard drives. If there is a utility that you'd love to have, but don't have the time or resources to build it yourself, we might just be able to build one for you.
Web Site Optimization:
Our web site optimization service is targeted for small businesses. We can quickly assess a wide variety of search engine and performance charactistics and report back to you with suggestions for improvements that will help you attract and retain visitors to your site. Once you receive the report you may choose to make some, all or none of the improvements yourself or contract us to take care of it for you.
Performance Assessments:
This service is geared toward small to mid-sized businesses who don't have the tools or expertise to performance test their own site and thus don't really know how fast their site is. PerfTestPlus has the ability to quickly collect some performance snapshots and report back how the site compares to expectations or competitors sites under little or no load. While these performance snapshots are far from the whole story, they are a good place to start when you aren't even sure if you need a more complete performance testing program.
Independent Validation & Verification:
Do you need to ensure that a software service provider is complying with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or would you like an outside evaluation of whether an application meets it's requirements? PerfTestPlus can provide that unbiased assessment. We know how to efficiently determine your compliance with a given set of requirements or standards. We also know how to help you achieve compliance if you're not sure how to effectively get from where you are to where you need to be.
Group Facilitation:
Does your team find it challenging to reach decisions in meetings? Does it seem like everyone is speaking a different language? Are new ideas more likely to lead to arguements and hurt feelings than better solutions? Maybe a trained facilitator can help. PerfTestPlus has trained facilitators who can help our group communicate and make better decisions faster.
In addition to simply being an outside facilitator, we can use a facilitation opportunity to train you or a member of your staff in the basics of group facilitation. We think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much the effectiveness of your group is with facilitation.