27 March 2008

The BS7925-2 Standard for Software Component Testing

This doc is now 11 years old, but has some really good basic ideas for proceeding through a release cycle.  While on first glance the doc looks to be ginormous, it's not really that bad; the meat of it is really covered in the first 30%. Sections of interest:
  • 2.1.1.8 mentions the order in which test activities should be done--it includes Component Test Specification (sandwiched between Planning and Execution)
  • 2.3 "Component test specification".  In brief, tests are written here using the techniques that were determined doing Planning (read: tests weren't written during Planning, but the techniques were chosen then)
  • 3 "Test Case Design Techniques".  Concisely describes popular and useful techniques for creating test cases for a component.
  • 4 "Test Measurement Techniques".  These aren't criteria, but rather methods for helping to figure out progress--and maybe setting criteria based on this info.  They show how to do this for each test case technique type in section 3 (most are pretty obvious, but it's still nice to see on paper).
Grab some coffee and take a gander, here.  Oh ya, and in case you're familiar with this group, this doc was produced by the BCS SIGIST.  (seriously, why?  I guess the real question is why "British Computer Society Specialist Interest Group in Software Testing"?  Reminds me of Monty Python's Life of Brian...)

2 comments:

Steve said...

People's Front!

turboladen said...

Oh, so you want to join the PFJ then, eh?