Testing processes in business-critical chain software lifecycle

The business-critical chain lifecycle is an agile software development lifecycle that aims at aligning the software project deliverables to attain the business objectives based on business priorities. The traditional software development projects work on the assumption that all 'equal effort consumers' would be treated equally and worked upon. The agile methodology ensures that the delivery cycles are reduced thus introducing agility in the way business is supported by underlying technologies. The proposed lifecycle model introduces new variables pertaining to the business value generation each finished piece of code would produce. Hence the software project processes have to be modified to cater to it. Even the usual agile lifecycle testing strategies need to be modified to suit the proposed model. The test plans, test estimations, test resource management, quality control, regression plans and automation road map and plans have to be customized to cater to the new life cycle model. The secondary project management activities such as risk management, procurement management, etc also may to be modified with respect to the testing processes. My paper aims at using the critical chain principles and proposes a software lifecycle model that can cater to business priorities and aligning the testing processes not only to development cycles but also to the actual business value created. In this paper I would take a case study and compare and contrast when project uses the regular models and this new model. I would also provide guidelines to use this lifecycle model and modify regular project management activities to cater to the new model with emphasis on the testing processes. The paper would try to provide the ideal scenarios; in project teams, in consulting firms and in new customers and expectations; where such a model could provide high impact on the way consulting companies can do successful projects and creating more value to the customers.