Test Monitor

Definition

Test Monitor

the role that is played when a person monitors a test participant during a usability test

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, Test Monitor is part of the following inheritance hierarchy:

• Type: Concrete
• Superclass: Engineer
• Subclasses:
  • None

Responsibilities

The typical role-specific responsibilities of a Test Monitor are to:

• Set up a usability test.
• Observe test participant during a usability test.
• Record relevant behavior of the test participant.

Test monitors typically inherit the general role responsibilities from the role process component.

Expertise

To fulfill these responsibilities, test monitors typically should have the following expertise, training, and experience:

• Deep knowledge of the item under test (e.g., document, user-interface prototype, or application) including:
  • Requirements
  • Architecture(s) (user-interface or website, information)
  • Design (screen or webpage)
• Deep knowledge of usability testing tasks, techniques, and tools.
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills that can be used to communicate with both test participants, development team members, and customer representatives.

Tasks

Test monitors typically perform the following role-specific tasks in an iterative, incremental, parallel, and time-boxed manner:

• Testing Tasks:
  • Test Planning (usability tests)
  • Test Reuse (e.g., of questionnaires)
  • Test Design
  • Test Execution
  • Test Reporting
• Quality Engineering – Quality Control Tasks:
  • Quality Control – Requirements Evaluation
  • Quality Control – Architecture Evaluation

Test monitors typically inherit common role tasks from the role process component.

Teams

Test monitors typically perform these tasks as members of the following teams:

• User Experience Team
• Inspection Teams:
  • Requirements Inspection Team (operational requirements and usability requirements)
  • Architecture Inspection Team (user-interface and information architectures)

Work Products

A test monitor typically produces the following work products:

• Test Work Products:
  • Usability Testing Documents:
    • Project Test Plan (usability testing section)
    • Master Test List (usability testing section)
    • Test Procedure (usability tests)
    • Test Report (usability tests)
    • Test Summary Report (usability testing section)
    • Usability Test Screening Questionnaire (questions)
    • Usability Test Orientation Script
    • Usability Test Observations Form (form and observations)
    • Usability Pretest Questionnaire (questions)
    • Usability Posttest Questionnaire (questions)
  • Software:
    • Test Suite
    • Test Case
    • Test Data
• Quality Work Products:
  • Inspection Report
  • Inspection Summary Report

Guidelines

• The same person does not typically play both the test engineer and test monitor roles as these two roles require quite different training and experience.
• This role typically inherits the common team guidelines from the roles process component.