Software Testing and Development Methodologies

Validating the Requirements

• Validation involves test activities beginning in parallel with corresponding development activities.
• Acceptance tests are derived from user requirements.
• System tests are based on functional requirements.
• Integration tests are based on the system's architecture.

Key Actions in Validation

• Reviewing requirements (peer review, rigorous inspection, etc.).
• Testing the requirements for documenting the expected behavior under specified conditions.
• Defining acceptance criteria together with users and based on their requirements.
• Simulating the requirements (simulations with mock-ups to validate requirements and make design choices if necessary).

Good Practices of Requirements Validation

• Reviewing requirements is a powerful technique for identifying ambiguous or unverifiable requirements.
• Reviewing requirements helps identify requirements that aren't defined clearly enough for design to begin.
• Reviewing requirements also helps identify other problems.

Reviewing Requirements

• Peer review of requirements, particularly the type of rigorous review called inspection, is one of the highest-value software quality practices available.
• Assemble a small team of reviewers who represent different perspectives (analyst, customer, developer, tester).
• Carefully examine the written requirements, analysis models, and related information for defects.
• Informal preliminary reviews during requirements development are also valuable.

Defining Acceptance Criteria

• Ask users to describe how they will determine whether the solution meets their needs and is fit for use.
• Acceptance criteria include a combination of the software passing a defined set of acceptance tests based on user requirements.

Simulating the Requirements

• Commercial tools are available that allow a project team to simulate a proposed system either in place of or to augment written requirements specifications.
• Simulation takes prototyping to the next level, by letting BAs work with users to rapidly build executable mock-ups of a system.

Testing the Requirements

• Tests constitute an alternative view of the requirements.
• Writing tests requires you to think about how to tell if the expected functionality was correctly implemented.
• Derive tests from the user requirements to document the expected behavior of the product under specified conditions.
• Walk through the tests with customers to ensure that they reflect user expectations.

This quiz covers the parallel testing and development process, acceptance tests from user requirements, and the specific bases for system and integration tests.