Introduction

The purpose of the Test workflow is to verify and validate the quality and correctness of your system. Following the enhanced lifecycle for the Unified Process, during the Inception phase you can validate a wide range of project artifacts through inspections and reviews. It is possible to test your requirements model you can do a user interface walkthrough, a use-case model walkthrough, or even use-case scenario testing. It is possible to test your models and project management artifacts by performing peer reviews and inspections of them.

There are several important best practices that you should apply with respect to the Test workflow. First, recognize that if you can build something, you can test it you can inspect requirements, review your models, and test your source code. In fact, if something isn't worth testing, then it likely isn't worth developing. Second, recognize that silence isn't golden, that your goal is to identify potential defects, not to cover them up. To be successful at testing, you need to have the right attitude that it is good to test and that it is even better to find defects.

If it isn't worth testing, then it isn't worth creating.

A third best practice is to test often and test early. There are two reasons for this: (1) we make most of our mistakes early in the life of a project, and (2) the cost of fixing defectsincreases exponentially the later they are found. Technical people are very good at technical...