Testing Throughout The Software Life Cycle (Dhea Frizky)

TESTING AND
IMPLEMENTATION
TESTING THROUGHOUT
THE SOFTWARE LIFE
CYCLE
Dheafrizky
SistemInformasi
Universitas Islam Negeri SultanSyarifKasimRiau

Testing is not a stand-alone activity. It has its place within a
software development life cycle model and therefore the life cycle
applied will largely determine how testing is organized.
There are many different forms of testing. Because several
disciplines, often with different interests, are involved in the
development life cycle, it is important to clearly understand and
define the various test levels and types.This chapter discusses the
most commonly applied software development models, test levels
and test types. Maintenance can be seen as a specific instance of a
development process.The way maintenance influences the test
process, levels and types and how testing can be organized is
described in the last section of this chapter.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT MODELS
 Understand the relationship between
development, test activities and work products in
the development life cycle and give examples
based on project and product characteristics and
context. (K2)
 Recognize the fact that software development
models must be adapted to the context of project
and product characteristics. (Kl)
 Recall reasons for different levels of testing and
characteristics of good testing in any life cycle
model. (Kl)

The development process adopted for a project
will depend on the project aims and goals. There are
numerous development life cycles that have been
developed in order to achieve different required
objectives. These life cycles range from lightweight and
fast methodologies, where time to market is of the
essence, through to fully controlled and documented
methodologies where quality and reliability are key
drivers.
Each of these methodologies has its place in
modern software development and the most
appropriate development process should be applied to
each project. The models specify the various stages of
the process and the order in which they are carried out.

In every development life cycle, a part of testing is
focused on verification testing and a part is focused on
validation testing. Verification is concerned with evaluating a
work product, component or system to determine whether it
meets the requirements set. In fact, verification focuses on the
question 'Is the deliverable built according to the specification?'.
Validation is concerned with evaluating a work product,
component or system to determine whether it meets the user
needs and requirements. Validation focuses on the question 'Is
the deliverable fit for purpose, e.g. does it provide a solution to
the problem?'.

V-model
Before discussing the V-model, we will look at the model
which came before it. The waterfall model was one of the earliest
models to be designed. It has a natural timeline where tasks are
executed in a sequential fashion. We start at the top of the
waterfall with a feasibility study and flow down through the
various project tasks finishing with implementation into the live
environment.
Design flows through into development, which in turn
flows into build, and finally on into test. Testing tends to happen
towards the end of the project life cycle so defects are detected
close to the live implementation date. With this model it has been
difficult to get feedback passed backwards up the waterfall and
there are difficulties if we need to carry out numerous iterations
for a particular phase.

Testing Throughout The Software Life Cycle (Dhea Frizky)

The V-model was developed to address some of the problems experienced
using the traditional waterfall approach. Defects were being found too late in the life
cycle, as testing was not involved until the end of the project. Testing also added lead
time due to its late involvement. The V-model provides guidance that testing needs to
begin as early as possible in the life cycle, which, as we've seen in Chapter 1, is one of
the fundamental principles of structured testing. It also shows that testing is not only
an execution-based activity. There are a variety of activities that need to be
performed before the end of the coding phase. These activities should be carried out
in parallel with development activities, and testers need to work with developers and
business analysts so they can perform these activities and tasks and produce a set of
test deliverables.
The work products produced by the developers and business analysts
during development are the basis of testing in one or more levels. By starting test
design early, defects are often found in the test basis documents. A good practice is
to have testers involved even earlier, during the review of the (draft) test basis
documents. The V-model is a model that illustrates how testing activities (verification
and validation) can be integrated into each phase of the life cycle. Within the V-
model, validation testing takes place especially during the early stages, e.g. reviewing
the user requirements, and late in the life cycle, e.g. during user acceptance testing.

Although variants of theV-model exist, a common type ofV-model uses
four test levels. The four test levels used, each with their own
objectives, are:
• component testing: searches for defects in and verifies the
functioning of software components (e.g. modules, programs,
objects, classes etc.) that are separately testable;
• integration testing: tests interfaces between components,
interactions to different parts of a system such as an operating
system, file system and hard ware or interfaces between systems;
• system testing: concerned with the behavior of the whole
system/product as defined by the scope of a development project or
product.The main focus of system testing is verification against
specified requirements;
• acceptance testing: validation testing with respect to user needs,
require ments, and business processes conducted to determine
whether or not to accept the system.

The various test levels are explained and discussed in
detail in Section 2.2. In practice, a V-model may have more,
fewer or different levels of development and testing,
depending on the project and the software product. For
example, there may be component integration testing after
component testing and system integration testing after
system testing. Test levels can be combined or reorganized
depending on the nature of the project or the system
architecture. For the integration of a commercial off-the-
shelf (COTS) software product into a system, a purchaser
may perform only integration testing at the system level (e.g.
integration to the infrastructure and other systems) and at a
later stage acceptance testing

Note that the types of work products mentioned in
Figure 2.2 on the left side of the V-model are just an illustration.
In practice they come under many different names. References
for generic work products include the Capability Maturity
Model Integration (CMMi) or the 'Software life cycle processes'
from ISO/IEC 12207. The CMMi is a framework for process
improvement for both system engineering and software
engineering. It provides guidance on where to focus and how, in
order to increase the level of process maturity [Chrissis et ah,
2004]. ISO/IEC 12207 is an integrated software life cycle process
standard that is rapidly becoming more popular.

From Section 2.1, you should now understand the
relationship between development and testing within a
development life cycle, including the test activities and test
(work) products. You should know that the development
model to use should fit, or must be adapted to fit, the
project and product characteristics. You should be able to
recall the reasons for different levels of testing and
characteristics of good testing in any life cycle model. You
should know the glossary terms (commercial) off-the-shelf
software (COTS), incremental development model, test
level, validation, verification and V-model.

Bibliography
Graham et.al.(2011). ISTBQ-Fondation Of
Software Testing London : Cengage Learning
EMEA

Link:
http://sif.uin-suska.ac.id/
http://fst.uin-suska.ac.id/
http://www.uin-suska.ac.id/

Testing Throughout The Software Life Cycle (Dhea Frizky)

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