Test Considerations

Home
Up

 

 

Testing Considerations

All of the testing areas need to be fully assessed when looking at how to approach the testing requirements to best suit the particular project being addressed.

We will address 2 case studies relating to 2 fictitious companies, these being:

Ø      The World Bank Corporation -

 

Ø      Pharmaceutical Worldwide Inc.

 

Case Study 1: The World Bank Corporation - A Strategic Project 

Case Study 1 is following a formal structured approach to the testing requirements for a strategic project.

 Scenario: The World Bank Corporation has been working on a development to run an online financial management system.  They have to fully test the delivered working system within 18 months, and it has to be completely structured and comprehensive in its approach to completely satisfy their strict Quality Assurance department.

 Considerations: As this scenario was fully strategic in its approach some preliminary assessment of testing would have been performed throughout strategic stages of development.

 

Case Study 2: Pharmaceutical Worldwide Inc. - A Time Constrained Project

Case Study 2 is following an informal approach to the testing requirements due to there being a time constraint, which ensures that any time limitations are adhered to in the overall testing life cycle.

 Scenario: Pharmaceutical Worldwide Inc. has been working on a development to produce a working financial management system too.  They have 6 months to test the developed system.

 Considerations: As this scenario was based upon time constraints there was no time to perform any test assessment prior to the product being available for testing as the test team was put together at the last minute.

 

Conclusion: 

The table below reflects the overall trade-off and benefits between Case Study 1 and Case Study 2:

A TIME CONSTRAINED PROJECT vs. A STRATEGIC PROJECT

Area Compromised

Trade-Off

Benefit

Test documentation

Quality and quantity of documentation content.

Risk being that the quality and coverage is not as detailed as it could be.

Time to produce documents reduced.

Test Plan and Test Project Plan content

Amount of documented coverage.

Risk being that the overall in depth details will not exist.

Reduced time to produce content.

Test tool research and selection

Usage of test tools.

Risk not necessarily being an issue due to the overall timescales required for the selection, implementation and training of them.

Save time that would have been spent on test tool selection, implementation and training in the use of them.

Test coverage

Negative testing and specific testing addressing data boundaries are omitted.

Risk being that the overall boundaries of data are not completely tested for specific business test scenarios.

Due to only testing a valid range of data examples the testing time will be reduced considerably.

Testing techniques

Non-functional testing is omitted, which would normally test out areas such as the configuration of the system, system recovery and performance.

Risk being that non-functional based areas of the system

As specific areas of testing are focused upon, such as Integration, Systems Integration and User Acceptance testing, time can be saved, fully optimised and have a specific primary focus.

Regression testing

The re-testing if failed areas only cover failed sections and do not cover any other part of the developed system.

Risk being that an area of failure may result in a failure on another section of the development.

Limited regression testing will result in a quicker re-testing process timescales of any failed areas.

Although a compromise is made by following the requirements of a time constrained project a structured, although somewhat limited, testing approach can still be followed, albeit not quite as rigorous as that of the strategic approach.

 
 
Send mail to Anthony.Cairns@AnthonyCairns.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2001-2006 Anthony Cairns
Last modified: December 30, 2006