The Best Approach

As the Vulcan philosopher said, "Our diversity is our strength." The more points of view represented in the testing, the more defects will be found. Ideally, use as many approaches as you need or, realistically, as many as you can afford.

I advocate putting the testers in close communications with the developers, with as few barriers as possible, but I do not advocate having them all report to the same manager. People with the same leader eventually come to have the same view. The dancers have their ballet mistress; the musicians have their conductor. Each group has its own point of view, and each needs someone to represent that point of view. All of them have the same goal: an excellent production.

An approach to management that builds a strong team working together transferring knowledge to get the job done is far preferable to one that allows testers to become isolated. Isolated testers can be overwhelmed by the size of the task they must perform.

One of the ways to cultivate good relations between developers and testers is to minimize the subjective arguments used in validation. Use fact and measurement to report problems, not opinion. Another way to cultivate good relations in any team is by being interested in what everyone is doing, like the ballet mistress who must know each person's part. The purpose is not to check up on them, but to properly appreciate the scope of their effort and the merit in their accomplishments.

Plan the best approach for the system. If the building blocks or units are good, top-down testing is the most efficient way to accomplish testing. If the quality of the units is uncertain, or if there are high-reliability, safety-critical considerations, a bottom-up approach is usually considered best practice. For example, a bottom-up approach may be necessary when a significant amount of new (untrusted) objects or processes are involved. Almost all of the examples in this book use a top-down approach.

If the development effort is some flavor of RAD/Agile, top-down testing with an integrator coordinating intergroup communications is probably the best approach. The best successes I have seen use a brief bulleted style for the design documents during the development phases. When the product nears completion, the user guide becomes the vehicle used to document the design. In high-reliability and safety-critical projects where the bottom-up approach is used, it is common to see more formal documentation carrying more of the communications between groups. The role of integrator in a bottom-up effort is traditionally filled by an engineer. Whichever approach is used, the test inventory must still be constructed for the project.



Software Testing Fundamentals
Software Testing Fundamentals: Methods and Metrics
ISBN: 047143020X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 132

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