COEN 286: Test Plan Exercise

Software Testing and Quality Assurance -- winter, 2008

Prof. John Noll

Santa Clara University

1. Overview

One strategy for testing a product is to follow Bach's GFSTP, expanding the number of functions tested and the depth of testing to fit the available time. This approach has some advantages: it's flexible and adapts automatically to knowledge gained during actual testing. It does have some drawbacks, however, including

• testing priority is rather coarse grained;
• test effectiveness depends on the skill of the tester;
• tests are not repeatable.

The GFSTP is a good approach if time is severely limited and the testing is to be done at the end of the development cycle. However, if we start early in the product or testing lifecycle, we can potentially develop a more effective test program. This is the purpose of the test plan.

2. Instructions

Suppose that next quarter, I have hired you to test the PEOS web interface, in preparation for its deployment to support COEN 286 exercises. Your job is to contribute to the goal of releasing a final product that has ``insanely great'' quality.

Toward this goal, create a test plan with the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. Overview, including objectives, scope, and major milestones.
3. Features to be tested, in order, and an explanation of why.
4. Test Timeline, including entry criteria, exit criteria, stopping criteria, tasks, deliverables, and roles. Assume a four week schedule, starting at the beginning of the quarter. In other words, we want the final product read to be deployed in time for next quarter's Test Design exercise.
5. Bibliography. Cite all external references, including your own work, and list them in the bibliography. Use correct academic style for bibliography entries.

You may assume the product will be deployed as it is now, and there will be at least one programmer working to fix failures you uncover.

Be sure to state explicitly any other assumptions you make, and do not make assumptions that trivialize the problem.

3. Deliverables

Your plan should be formatted in 12pt type with minimum 1 inch margins on all sides.

Provide a separate, numbered section for each part described above. Identify the plan sub-parts clearly for each major and minor milestone. Number each page, and put your name in a header or footer on each page after the title page.

Include a cover page with the document title and your name. Please do not put your student ID on any page.

Read the general requirements on the class home page. In particular, be sure to spell-check and proofread your document before submission.

The final document is due March 20, at 23:59 (midnight).

3.1 Submitting the Final Document

You must submit on time: no late submissions can be accepted due to grading deadlines.

You should email your test plan to me by March 20, at 23:59 (midnight). You may do this in one of three ways:

1. Create a PDF version of your plan with embedded fonts that can be read using Acrobat Reader v. 5.0 (PDF level 1.3). It is important to be sure the fonts are embedded, as your installation may contain fonts that mine doesn't. The ps2pdf utility for Unix can convert PostScript to PDF with embedded fonts:

   % ps2pdf -dCompatibilityLevel=1.3 -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true doc.ps
   

   This is available on the Design Center Linux hosts. Windows users have many options including Acrobat Distiller. Just be sure the fonts are embedded.
2. Plain text, nicely formatted.
3. Microsoft Word 2003 format. Please be careful with this: I will be reading your documents using OpenOffice v. 2.2, which usually does a good job, but may have problems if you use unusual fonts.

4. Assessment

Your plan will be assessed along three dimensions:

1. Completeness: did you include all of the required sections? Is each section elaborated sufficiently?
2. Correctness: does your inspire confidence that it could be followed, and would lead to a well tested product? (If I give your plan to the COEN 286 class next quarter, would they be able to implement it? Would the results be meaningful?)
3. Presentation: is your document well written and formatted? Does it follow the required structure? Could a competent third party understand your plan?

Generated Mon Mar 17 07:26:34 2008