Test the Solution

After the solution passes the unit testing and integration testing, a QA team member or other professional involved in the effort will execute the functional scripts to test the solution. The purpose of this testing is to

• Verify that the solution meets the requirements and objects described in the functional specification

• Find defects in the solution algorithms

• Find deviations in the solution's ability to meet the requirements

If a tester discovers any deviations or defects, the tester will stop executing the test script, record the output of the failure event, and send it to development. Depending on the severity and priority of the bug, development will make a fix to include in a patch or fix the solution at a later date in the next release. Table 18-5 summarizes the deliverables in the test step.

Table 18-5: Summary of Deliverables for the Test Step

Execution Order	Deliverable	Responsible Party
1	Execute test script	QA
2	Bug description	Tester
3	Bug fix patch	Development

Most development organizations use a bug tracking software package to record, queue, and track bugs. A good bug tracking system supports the following features:

• Customizable e-mail notification of responsible parties

• Ability to attach screen captures or other pertinent files

• Customizable status levels

• Customizable priority levels

• Reporting capabilities to perform aggregate analyses on bug data

• Ability to scan bug data in user-defined sort orders

Usually, a solution never passes a functional test without encountering errors. Quite often, situations arise that require a decision to be made about passing the solution so that it might be rolled to the production environment. The owner or responsible authority must be provided reports from testing to decide what is the best course of action. The combination of bug reports and test script information should be made available to help support a decision that is made in full knowledge of the consequences of the action.