| One thing that hasn't been mentioned so far is where you obtain all this hardware. Even if you take great pains, and risk, to equivalence partition your configurations to the barest minimum, you still could require dozens of different hardware setups. It would be an expensive proposition to go out and buy everything at retail, especially if you will use the hardware only once for the one test pass. Here are a few ideas for overcoming this problem: Buy only the configurations that you can or will use most often. A great plan is for every tester on the team to have different hardware. This may drive your purchasing department and the group that maintains your company's PCs crazy (they like everyone to have exactly the same configuration) but it's a very efficient means of always having different configurations available to test on. Even if your test team is very small, three or four people having just a few configurations would be a great help. Contact the hardware manufacturers and ask if they will lend or even give you the hardware. If you explain that you're testing new software and you want to assure that it works on their hardware, many will do this for you. They have an interest in the outcome, too, so tell them that you'll furnish them with the results of the tests and, if you can, a copy of the finished software. It's good to build up these relationships, especially if you find a bug and need a contact person at the hardware company to report it to. Send a memo or email to everyone in your company asking what hardware they have in their office or even at homeand if they would allow you to run a few tests on it. To perform the configuration testing, you may need to drive around town, but it's a whole lot cheaper than attempting to buy all the hardware. CONFIGURATION TESTING VCRS The Microsoft ActiMates product line of animatronic dolls not only interfaced with a PC, but also a VCR. Coded commands, invisible to a viewer, were mixed in with the video on the tape. A special box connected to the VCR decoded the commands and sent them by radio to the doll. The test team obviously needed to perform configuration testing on VCRs. They had many PC configurations but no VCRs. They found two ways to get the job done: They asked about 300 employees to bring in their VCRs for a day of testing. The program manager awarded gift certificates as a means of persuading people to bring them in. They paid the manager of a local electronics superstore to stay at the store after hours (actually, all night) while they pulled each VCR off the shelf, connected their equipment, and ran the tests. They dusted and cleaned the VCRs and bought the manager dinner to show their thanks.
When it was all over, they had tested about 150 unique VCRs, which they determined was a very good equivalence partition of the VCRs in people's homes. |
If you have the budget, work with your project manager to contract out your test work to a professional configuration and compatibility test lab. These companies do nothing but configuration testing and have every piece of PC hardware known to man. Okay, maybe not that much, but they do have a lot. These labs can help you, based on their experience, select the correct hardware to test. Then, they will allow you to come in and use their equipment, or they will provide a complete turn-key service. You provide the software, the step-by-step test process, and the expected results. They'll take it from there, running the tests and reporting what passed and what failed. Of course this can be costly, but much less so than buying the hardware yourself or worse, not testing and having customers find the problems.
|
