Chapter 7: Testers

Chapter 7

Testers

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System is the first version of Visual Studio to include a suite of testing tools designed specifically for testers. These tools support testing throughout the entire software development and maintenance life cycles. In the past, testers have typically relied on third-party products to create and execute tests. Organizations have had to implement custom processes and solutions to coordinate defect tracking and resolution between developers, testers, and managers. This chapter explores the features of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers that support testers in their efforts to create and run tests, record test results, delegate failed tests back to developers, monitor test statistics, and publish test reports.

It's important to recognize that there are many types of testers, and even more types of tests, involved in software development. Before I discuss the specific tools in Team Edition for Testers, we'll look at some of these types of tests, as well as their varying requirements. One common method used to visualize these categories, called the “V” model, is shown in Figure 7-1. This model associates each phase of software refinement, from the justification of a business case to the construction of individual development artifacts, with a class of testing. Testing scenarios addressed directly by Team Edition for Testers are surrounded by a dashed box.

Notice that unit testing is not included as one of these scenarios. This is because unit testing, as well as other testing-related activities such as code coverage and profiling, is generally performed by developers. Developer-centric testing features are addressed in detail in Chapter 6.

Integration and system testing focus on the interaction between various parts of a system. They also verify that the application meets operational requirements such as performance and scalability of both the code base and system infrastructure. For example, an online commerce application might have a shopping cart subsystem and a customer profile subsystem. Although the classes and components in each subsystem are tested individually with unit testing, you would also need to ensure that changes to a user's profile that are made during a cart check-out process are handled correctly. In addition, you would need to verify that the check-out process continues to perform acceptably as the user load increases and as the amount of persisted data in the user profile data store increases over time.

Figure 7-1 The “V” model, which illustrates the relationship between the phases of development and testing

The rest of the chapter will examine the specific tools provided by Team Edition for Testers to address these types of issues. You will also see how Team Edition for Testers provides a predictable and flexible environment for collaboration between developers and testers throughout the product development life cycle.