Iml v1.5 open-source version

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INTEGRATION
MATURITY LEVEL
(Levels of black box testing)
Cyril Boucher
Christophe Rault

Introduction
Objective:
Defining a tool (called The Integration Maturity Level) that
allows:

 Having a common definition of level of integration (i.e.
depth of testing) for achieving a good feature quality.

 Elaborating and Describing the Test strategy along
iterations that enforces to test differently along project
iterations : early testing sympathetically then testing
aggressively and diversely.

 Reporting the Quality/maturity for Feature

Introduction
The Integration Maturity Level is a Testing level
classification that has been defined by reusing some original
ideas of test classification, depth of test and type of test as
presented in:

 Lesson Learned from Software Testing- A Context-Driven
Approach: by Cem Kaner, James Bach, Bret Pettichord

 Heuristic Testing Strategy Model:
http://www.testingeducation.org/BBST/foundations/Bach_s
atisfice-tsm-4p-1.pdf

The list of test techniques is not exhaustive per level. They
are given to ease understanding of the expected level of test
complexity and they can be used in a variety of combinations.

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Integration Maturity Level Classification

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 Discover the product, gather information
about explicit / implicit specification

 Analyze individual claims, and clarify vague
claims.

 Expect the product to be brought into
alignment with the requirements

 Mature the feature before feature validation
testing

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 Test the completeness of a user story / Involves a
suite of tests on the completed system

 Identify things that the product can do (functions and
sub-functions).

 Determine how you’d know if a function was capable
of working.

 Test each function / feature, one at a time.

 See that each function does what it’s supposed to do
and not what it isn’t supposed to do.

 Convoluted scenarios, challenging data and function
interaction are avoided at this level of testing

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 Begin by thinking about everything going on around the
product.

 Design tests that involve meaningful and complex
interactions with the product.

 Testing use cases that cover several features and
interaction between features

 Testing according to various possible users profiles

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 Look for any data processed by the product. Look at
outputs as well as inputs.
 Decide which particular data to test with. Consider things
like boundary values, typical values, convenient
values, invalid values, or best representatives.
 Consider combinations of data worth testing together.
 Data coverage and complex test result evaluation methods
are of interest
 Test & challenge flow of data through the system / sub-
systems
 Test system reliability again malicious / unexpected lack of /
malformed data
 Test against variability into features
 Error handling tests, State and transition testing
with aggressive test attacks during state transitions

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 Look for sub-systems and functions that are vulnerable to
being overloaded or “broken” in the presence of
challenging data or constrained resources.

 Identify data and resources related to those sub-systems
and functions.

 Select or generate challenging data, or resource
constraint conditions to test with: e.g., large or complex
data structures, high loads, long test runs, many test
cases, low memory conditions.

 Test resource usage

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 Compare two systems to find which performs better

 Measure what parts of the system or workload causes the system to
perform badly.

 Demonstrate that the system meets performance criteria

 Test Concurrency between features

 Test product responsiveness

 Test system scalability

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 Find out how the software actually works, and to ask questions about
how it will handle difficult cases
 Expectations are open: Some results may be predicted and expected,
others may not.
 Imagine how system could fail and design test to demonstrate whether
the system actually fails that way.
 Looking how the system recovers from failure of issues
 Test against various configurations (explicit or implicit).
 Test Inter-operability
 Test Compatibility (forward or backward) and migration / upgrade
 Test Security
 Test against Time: testing with “fast” or “slow” input; fastest and slowest;
combinations of fast and slow. Changing Rates: speeding up and
slowing down (spikes, bursts, hangs, bottlenecks, interruptions). What
happens with unexpected events?
 Test non functional quality criteria that matters for the product and the
customers and that becomes testable only when the product is enough
mature

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Test Analysis and Design
Use as a Checklist for:

 Increasing test plan coverage:
 Going beyond functional testing
 As an Heuristics for generating new test ideas

 Diversifying test techniques:
 Various defect require various kind of test techniques

 Assessing product risk or value along targeted quality
characteristics or defect classes:
 Various IML Test "test idea / Test basis" against tested domain
area, product, feature

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Test Analysis and Design
For Test Plan Coverage:
30
30

25

20
20
17

15
15
9
10

5
5
3
0
IML1
IML2
IML3
IML4
IML5
IML6
IML7

 Do we have good test plan coverage?
=> Number of test cases in the test plan per their IML

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Test Review
For Test Idea & Test Strategy Review:

 Reviewer Checklist

 Review test coverage

 Reviewing Test Techniques against product
risks an values

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Testing Root Cause Analysis
Use as a classification scheme for identifying
anti-patterns in test strategy & test plan:

 For defects leaked to customer or internal downstream
showstoppers

 If test idea was missing in our test plan, What level of testing
and techniques would have let us find the issues?

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Test Reporting

 Coverage along functional requirement BUT ALSO along non
functional test and test techniques
 Common definition to explain test coverage
 Understandable description of test purposes
 Usefull during Testing Session Debriefing

 Qualitative Reporting along 3 directions
 Test effort
 Testing coverage
 Testing Result / Quality

Iml v1.5 open-source version

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