22.7. Keeping Test Records

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Aside from making the testing process repeatable, you need to measure the project so that you can tell for sure whether changes improve or degrade it. Here are a few kinds of data you can collect to measure your project:

  • Administrative description of the defect (the date reported, the person who reported it, a title or description, the build number, the date fixed)

  • Full description of the problem

  • Steps to take to repeat the problem

  • Suggested workaround for the problem

  • Related defects

  • Severity of the problem for example, fatal, bothersome, or cosmetic

  • Origin of the defect: requirements, design, coding, or testing

  • Subclassification of a coding defect: off-by-one, bad assignment, bad array index, bad routine call, and so on

  • Classes and routines changed by the fix

  • Number of lines of code affected by the defect

  • Hours to find the defect

  • Hours to fix the defect

Once you collect the data, you can crunch a few numbers to determine whether your project is getting sicker or healthier:

  • Number of defects in each class, sorted from worst class to best, possibly normalized by class size

  • Number of defects in each routine, sorted from worst routine to best, possibly normalized by routine size

  • Average number of testing hours per defect found

  • Average number of defects found per test case

  • Average number of programming hours per defect fixed

  • Percentage of code covered by test cases

  • Number of outstanding defects in each severity classification

Personal Test Records

In addition to project-level test records, you might find it useful to keep track of your personal test records. These records can include both a checklist of the errors you most commonly make as well as a record of the amount of time you spend writing code, testing code, and correcting errors.

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Code Complete
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, Second Edition
ISBN: 0735619670
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 334

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