Software Testing – Redefined

By: R. Sankara Narayanan

Part:   1  2  3  

(Continued from previous part...)

Illustration 1 – Test Plan for Product X

Background

Organization X is a product development organization. It has outsourced the testing task for its Product X to Organization Y. Product X has 5 features and their testing requirements are as follows:

Test Requirements Vs Solutions

Requirement: Feature 1 is critical and needs to be tested thoroughly regressively in all the current build and the future builds.

Solution: This satisfies Section 9(a) of SSTP V1.2 and hence test cases shall be created and maintained for this feature.



Requirement: Feature 2 is less critical and needs to be tested but not exhaustively. This is a critical feature and there is a risk of resource volatility.

Solution: This satisfies Section 9(b) of SSTP V1.2 and hence test cases shall be created and maintained for this feature.



Requirement: Feature 3 is the heart of the product. If it is broken, the entire product is considered as broken. The contractual agreement has a mention about this feature. It also explicitly says that Organization Y shall perform the testing and test logs for the same is to be sent to Organization X for cross verification pertaining to this feature only.

Solution: This satisfies Section 9(c) of SSTP V1.2 and hence test cases shall be created and maintained for this feature.



Requirement: Feature 4 is not a critical feature at all. If it fails, the customer will not incur any monetary set back. This needs to be tested adequately.

Solution: This satisfies Section 10 of SSTP V1.2 and Exploratory Testing – Scripted/Unscripted shall be planned and executed for this feature. Even if considering the risk of resource volatility, without well written/maintained test cases, the impact of risk occurrence would be very less.



Requirement: Feature 5 is very critical and it is database intensive feature with complex business logics. It takes 5 person days for error-prone manual execution whereas it takes only 0.5 person days with error-free automated test scripts and this needs to be done repetitively in almost all the future builds of the Product X.

Solution: This satisfies Section 15 of SSTP V1.2. Do plan for Test Automation.

Illustration 2 – Test Plan for Project X

Organization X owns and executes Project X. It is a short-term testing project that spans around 2 months only to get a Website X up and running.

Requirement: Independent Testing Team - Organization X sets up an independent testing team to test the Integration Test Build of Website X for the first month.

Solution: This doesn’t satisfy SSTP V1.2’s Section 9 (including sub-sections a, b and c). This does satisfy SSTP V1.2’s Section 10 and Test Plan shall be created accordingly with only Exploratory Testing – Scripted/Unscripted.



Requirement: Outsourced Testing - Organization X decides to outsource the testing effort to Organization Y for the second month under no specific contractual obligations, i.e., with no mention about test logs/reports and test methodologies/strategies.

Solution: This doesn’t satisfy SSTP V1.2’s Section 9 (c) of SSTP V1.2. There is an implicit need that legally Organization Y has to prove that they have performed the adequate testing to meet the contractual obligations. Test Cases + Test Report would be ideal to prove this. But this is not mandated by the contractual terms/conditions. A Defect Report alone also could be used to prove that Organization Y has performed the adequate testing. This implies that the contractual terms/obligations shall be understood properly and Organization Y shall ensure that they are in-sync with the understanding of Organization X. Because, this contractual terms/conditions satisfies Section 10 (c) of SSTP V1.2 the Test Plan shall be created accordingly with only Exploratory Testing – Scripted/Unscripted.

Conclusion


Software Testing has many activities inbuilt into it. Creation/Maintenance of Test Cases and Automated Test Script is the critical activity and the products constitute the Test Library. As Test Planning is key to success in software testing analyzing the nature of the testing requirements, the testing activities can be planned with appropriate proportions and integrated together.

Part:   1  2  3  

Other Resource

... to read more articles, visit http://sqa.fyicenter.com/art/