March 2003
Volume 5 • Number 2

Contents

TESTING
Efficient Test Planning and Tracking

by Wayne D. Woodruff and Ron Pisechko

INTRODUCTION
As a leader of a software test organization for products that combine complex electronics with several layers of software, the following questions are inevitably asked:

• “What is the status of testing the xyz product with the latest code? Is it stable? How many defects?”
• “We are scheduling a new project. Once you have developed the tests, how long will the regression cycle take?”
• “Are you testing feature x? When was it last tested? Did it pass the test? How are you testing it?”
• “You ran a test and it failed. Upon what requirement was this test based?

All of these are valid questions. How quickly and easily one can produce the answers depends upon the organization’s test processes, how it maintains the test documentation, and the metrics that are generated by those processes.

This article describes the process and the metrics the authors’ organization has continually refined over the last few years. Several commercial test process management software solutions were investigated, but none seemed to fit the needs of the organization. The process presented here uses a commercially available PC-based requirements tool and a popular PC spreadsheet (no add-ons are required).

The full text of this article may be found in the print journal. To subscribe go to /quality-press/display-item/index.html?item=SUBSCR_SQP .

Return to Top