3.1 Best Practices for the Test Workflow

It isn t enough to simply develop software you need to build software that works. And there is only one way to prove that your software works: test it. During the Transition phase you will be focused on system and user testing efforts, something often referred to as testing in the large (testing performed during the Inception, Elaboration, and Construction phases is referred to as testing in the small). Figure 3.1 depicts the solution to the Test In The Large process pattern (Ambler, 1999), which includes a subset of the techniques of the Full Lifecycle Object-Oriented Testing (FLOOT) methodology (Ambler, 2001), and Table 3.1 summarizes the techniques depicted in the figure. The arrow on the left side of the diagram represents the inputs coming into the process and the arrow on the right side represents the outputs created by the effort. The first step is to accept your master test/QA plan, a task that often includes updating the plan so that it reflects all testing to be performed. Final validation of the current release begins once the test plan is accepted. As you can see, this is comprised of two general tasks system testing in which the development community tests the application and user testing in which the user community tests the application. Testing in the large is typically organized into system and user testing because your development team wants to first ensure, to the best of its ability,...