Improving Your Testing COSC 4345

Planning to test Testing is as important as design and coding High quality software means Create a software development process that is repeatable Testing to make sure the software hasn’t taken a step backward is called “regression” testing Most organizations automate regression testing Once you automate it, regression testing takes little effort on our part

Advantages of automated testing Less human effort Lower chance of being wrong than manual testing Tests can be run more frequently

Keeping test records Enables you to measure the project so that you can tell if changes have improved or degraded your system Test records: Defect description Steps to take to repeat the problem Suggested workaround (if applicable) Severity of roblem Origin of defect (requirements, design, coding, testing) Hours to find defect Hours to fix defect

Testing checklist Does each line of code have a test case? Does each feature have one or more test cases? Have all defined data-flow paths been tested with at least one test case? Have all simple boundaries been tested: maximum, minimum, and off-by-one boundaries? Has compatibility with old data been tested (i.e., old hardware, od versions of OS, old interfaces, other software)?

Working with professional test teams Test team – one or more people whose only job is to test Testers must have domain knowledge – Understand the functional requirements Must have software system and technical knowledge Must have a good rapport with the software team; communication is a key factor Must be able to take view the system from a user perspective Challenges: scheduling work adds bureaucracy, training testers with respect to new features, temptation to be defensive when testers find problems