Model based testing for Integration and Regression Tests in ERP

1 Whitepaper – Model-Based Integration Testing for ERP

Model-Based Integration Testing for ERP
An adaptive software solution generating test cases based on Bl ueprint business
process models

Whitepaper

June 2011, by

Dr. Harald Goebel
Andrew Kashulin
Heinz-Jürgen Scherer
Dr. Boris Zinchenko

TransWare | www.transwareag.com | Public


Table of Contents

Abstract 3
Motivation 3
Blueprinting an ERP Solution 4
Requirements for Testing 5
Approach for Model-Based Testing 6
Test Case Generation Algorithm 7
Execution Strategies for Test Cases 10
Adaptive Test Case Generation 11
Important Considerations 11
Interfaces and IT Systems 11
Work Products and Deliverables 12
Organizational and Resource Assignments 12

Costs Optimization of Test Case Analysis 12
End-to-End Process Execution Probability 12
Effort Weighted Testing 12

Methodology for Test Case Generation 13
ERP Solution Blueprinting 13
Modeling Method 14
Model and Diagram Data Interchange 14

Generation of Test Cases 16
BPMN Method Internally Used 16
Test Case Generation Based on the BPMN Method 17

Linking with Testing Tools 18

Summary 18
Bibliography 20



Abstract
For the requirements definition of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, the management
discipline and methodology of Business Process Management (BPM) has an important role in the
Blueprint project phase of ERP implementation. Using BPM methodology, the business requirements are
documented and analyzed. Process improvement is achieved via better support of business activities by
ERP software. The Blueprint consists of functional, organizational and system process models developed
by a Business Process Analysis (BPA) tool prior to the realization phase of customizing the ERP software.
Because of the complexity of ERP software, the integration testing of ERP supported processes is a very
essential task to lower business impacts of badly tested software. At the same time, testing is a resource-
consuming task in critical project phases. This whitepaper discusses an adaptive software solution for
automatically transforming Blueprint business process models into test cases for a methodical and tool-
based integration testing.

Motivation
ERP software is standard software from leading software vendors like SAP® or Oracle®. It comprises a
comprehensive support of business processes, and is generically developed for the enterprise market.
As implied by the definition of standard software, it is maintained by updates of the vendor and can be
updated. It is in the nature of things that ERP standard software tends to be a complex construct
consisting of many software components and configurations. ERP software needs to be customized to
implement requirements and support business processes of an organization. Customization is a standard
process in an ERP implementation, and is done by parameterization and change of the software
components like the programs and configuration originally supplied by the software vendors. Beside
functional acceptance, the software quality is influenced by errors in originally delivered software and
customization.

To achieve a qualified support of business processes, extensive software testing is mandatory not only
on the software development level, e.g. using unit tests. The maturity of customized software is achieved
by a continuous testing approach with functional use-case testing and integration testing. This is equally
true for traditional transaction-based ERP systems and Business Process Management Systems (BPMS)
with execution and integration of processes. Nowadays, SAP ERP is still a predominant transactional ERP
system where SAP transactions like forms support business activities.

Implementation of an ERP system is done through several project phases. SAP uses the Accelerated SAP
(ASAP) project methodology where Blueprinting is the design phase of the ERP solution. In the realization
phase, the ERP solution is customized based on the requirements specified in the Blueprint.

For the methodical approach of testing, the definition of test plans based on test cases is a challenging
task. To attain it, different members of the project team with various skills such as business key users,
business analysts, quality assurance (QA) and software implementation team members must work
together. It is even more complex because team members talk with different business or technical
languages and are distributed across different locations including the employment of System Integrator



offshore development teams. Primarily, we can consider three challenging aspects in ensuring the
quality of business processes ERP support:

Costs

The task of manually creating test cases is accomplished with high project efforts for the design of many
end-to-end business scenarios. The traditional design of test cases takes qualified and costly resources
out of the project core and testing teams. The business impact of insufficient integration testing reduces
production efficiency, and increase software maintenance costs.

Risks

Even if skilled project team members design the test cases, there is a high risk of not capturing all
relevant end-to-end scenarios to be executed as test cases, or having mostly incomplete test cases with
business impacts in the production environment. In productive operation, a process may fail because the
executed scenario was not tested or interfaces between different components were not identified for
appropriate interface integration tests. If a business process has changed in the context of risk
management like Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), it is critical to miss the re-testing of process risk controls.

Quality

Bad test coverage leads to low software quality with high business impact. This negative impact is
increased by an incomplete matching of the test data and insufficient reviews of work products and
deliverables.

All in all, the business impact of insufficiently tested end-to-end scenarios results in low quality business
process support and higher software maintenance costs.

Blueprinting an ERP Solution
For many years the Blueprint of an ERP solution was traditionally created via workshops to capture
business requirements from business key users and process owners. This process called “Blueprinting the
ERP solution” commonly uses tools from Microsoft Office to describe the organizational and functional
aspects with Word documents and Visio process flow diagrams.

The Business Process Management (BPM) concept is a management discipline that offers a more
comprehensive view of organizational, functional, data-centric, performance and process aspects of an
organization. BPA tools are used to describe the business architecture structured by management, core
and support process models in a single repository. The BPM approach for Blueprinting is supported by
software vendors like SAP® with Solution Manager and BPM or Oracle® with the Application Integration
Architecture (AIA) and the BPM Fusion Middleware.

As the use of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and BPM methodologies is becoming more and more popular
for large organizations, business processes are described by process models and their visual



representation which can show the process logic and flow with different levels of abstraction. On a
functional level, business processes are described by a model with a sequence of activities depicting the
business logic.

Figure 1 Business Process “Sales Order Processing“ supported by SAP ERP

Process models map business logic that describes end-to-end scenarios as sequences of business
activities.

The motivation for developing the solution described below is to use available Blueprint process models
to automatically generate test cases that can be used by test management tools to lower project costs
and reduce the risk of software quality impacts on IT supported business processes.

Requirements for Testing
As ERP software is usually customized for organizational and business requirements, there is the
absolute need for test management with applied testing concepts. Similar to concepts like software unit
testing which are very important for software development on the coding level, testing procedures like
functional use-case testing and integration testing are crucial to ensure the quality of ERP support on the
business process level.

To achieve the goal of improving quality and minimizing risks, a certain level of completeness of the test
cases is needed. Testing efforts can be reduced by avoiding unneeded test cases, removing redundancy,



and improving automation by setting correct priorities for frequently-operated end-to-end scenarios. It is
important to identify gaps between business processes and related test cases to achieve completeness
of test case coverage.

Because of business and IT complexity, the emergence of Change Requests (CR) is not unusual in the
project life cycle.

Using BPM methodology and a BPA tool for Blueprinting an ERP solution reduces the absolute number
and complexity of CRs because of a comprehensive understanding of the business logic and
requirements. Each CR influences the scope of the software solution, and has an impact on the
customizing. A change in a business process is managed in an ERP project by Change Management. This
should include the impact of the changes with respect to related test cases. In order to achieve lower
testing efforts, redundant and obsolete test cases have to be removed; and to ensure quality, existing
test cases must be updated to reflect the change of the business process.

Under software maintenance, test cases should be periodically reviewed to detect the impact of change
requests.

Approach for Model-Based Testing
Blueprint process models created in the BPA tool and imported for the generation of test case. The test
case data is utilized by the testing tool or for a manual test procedure.

Figure 2 Approach for model based testing

A test case is an end-to-end business scenario as a sequence of activities to be executed sequentially.
The process logic is explicitly formulated by using logical rules commonly expressed with exclusive
execution (XOR), parallel execution (AND) and inclusive execution (OR) of a branch in the process flow.
The OR rule is complex to understand. It can be comprehended as a combination of a XOR and an AND
rule [OS08]. Because process activities can consists of human or system atomic tasks (atomic means
here that a task cannot be divided further into subtasks, like a SAP transaction), a sub process is defined
by several tasks or a process interface. We use statements as designation of activities in a test case. The
statements are linked by transitions1 to the logical flow of an end-to-end scenario.

1
A transition is described in a process model by a connector between activities



Test Case Generation Algorithm
To calculate the full set of potentially possible test cases, we implemented an algorithm adapted from
[OS08] for the linearization of the model graph into test case models. While [OS08] discusses the
generation of test cases based on the Event-Process-Chains (EPC) method, the algorithm used here is
based on BPMN to internally describe process models and test cases. With regard to control flow based
testing this approach aligns with statement condition coverage [WP.2].

To calculate the combinatory of statements suitable for execution as test cases, we utilize the basic
BPMN patterns as described in the DoD Enterprise Architecture Design Patterns [MZM09]. For the
linearization of statements, in addition to the DoD design patterns we have to consider the iteration
pattern.

 Elementary sequence

 Split and Join Patterns

 Iteration

Elementary Sequence

The sequence is the fundamental idea of the chain of discrete individual statements following each other
in a certain order. It is the common semantic interpretation or implication causality.

Figure 3 Elementary sequence of statements

Split and Join Patterns

Split gateways have exactly one incoming and more than one outgoing connection, whereas join
gateways have more than one incoming and exactly one outgoing edge. Although implicit splits and joins
are not a good practice at all, they can be replaced by explicit gateways.



Pattern Linearization
Parallel AND split
1: A, B, C
2: A, C, B2

Exclusive choice
XOR split 1: A, B
2: A, C

Multiple choice OR
split 1: A,B
2: A, C
3: A, B, C
4: A,C, B2

Event-based choice
XOR split 1: A, B
2: A, C

2
Only needed for C3 condition coverage, not needed for C2 path, C1 branch or C0 statement coverage.



Pattern Linearization
Synchronized AND
join 1: A, B, C
2: B, A, C2

Unsynchronized
XOR join 1: A, C
2: B, C

Synchronized OR
join 1: A, C
2: B, C
3: A, B, C
4: B, A, C2

Implicit and explicit Iteration

The iteration is the fundamental idea of the similar repetitive sequence. Iterations use only XOR
connectors to create such a pattern.

Figure 4 Implicit iteration with F1, F2 and explicit iteration with F3, F4

Table 3 shows the results of the linearization of the iteration pattern of Figure 5.
The iteration is expanded into all possible sequences of statements.



Table 1 Linearization of the iteration

Runs (N) Linearization event
0 (F1) so-called “Top tested loop”
1 (F1, F2)
N = 2,… (F1, F2, F1, F2, …)

The linearization of the iteration is simple, but in practice it requires handling additional reasonable
assumptions to reduce the number of test runs. An additional parameter in the generation algorithm of
test cases describes how many loops have to be executed for an iteration pattern. Per default 2 loops are
generated per iteration.

Conclusion

Based on a breadth first search (BFS) algorithm handling graph theory [MAI11] the logic of linearization
of statements finds all potential end-to-end scenarios with the linear sequence of statements describing
a test case. For complex business processes with deeply nested branches, the number of some
thousands of potential possible end-to-end scenarios exceeds the practically approach of executing the
generated test cases. The generation of test cases for practical use is improved by an adaptive algorithm
for test case coverage.

Execution Strategies for Test Cases
Integration testing is a kind of control flow based testing procedure. There are different concepts to
reduce the potentially enormous number of possible test cases. For an example of a complex process
model with 10 XOR gateways and 2 branches each we will have 210 = 1024 test cases feasible for
execution. Because this number of potential test cases is too costly to be executed, the number should
be reduced by different test execution strategies.

The approach of narrowing the number of suitable test cases is called statement coverage test analysis
[WP.1]. In principle, 4 different statement coverage strategies CX (X=0..3) can be considered.

Table 2 Cases for test-case statement coverage

Case Coverage of Description Pro Con
C0 Statements All statements and gateways Less effort, all Not all transitions (edges of
as nodes of the control statements of the the control graph) between
graph will be covered by the process flow are statements will be passed
testing not possible in a executed. through while testing the
logical order. process model.
All statements are weighted
equally
Empty branches are not
covered
C1 Branches All edges of the control Empty braches are Dependencies of decisions are
graph with all nodes and covered not covered



Case Coverage of Description Pro Con
edges are tested at least 1 Loops are not tested
time. This includes the C0 sufficiently
coverage and all functional Complex branches are weakly
needed test cases, but not tested
all test cases for integration
testing.
C2 Paths Each rule with possible High error detection High effort for testing
decision is included in a test Based on conditions not all
case. paths are covered
High efforts by given
number of possible test
cases.
C3 Conditions All variations of rule High error detection Very high effort
decisions are covered in test
cases. Very high effort for
testing by potential number
of test cases.

Adaptive Test Case Generation
The test case generation software uses an adaptive approach to reduce the potential number of test
cases by the use of the parameter CX=0..3. For a practical use, branch coverage C1 coverage testing
deliverers good results of test quality with reasonable costs for the test case execution.

The testing condition coverage C3 is equivalent to the test case generation algorithm described in the
previous chapter. The adaptive approach starts with the generation of possible test cases. Each
generated test case is tested against the chosen C0 or C1 coverage.

For statement coverage, for each new generated test case it is tested against the available test case
statements if all statements of the process model are covered. For branch test cases this is the same
with edges tested against the process model instead of statements. Overlapping test cases are
eliminated to reduce the effort of test case execution.

Important Considerations
Although the process is in the center of test case generation, it is important to understand the context of
a statement in the end-to-end scenario. The context is described by the preceding and subsequent
statements linked by transitions, the statement is supported by IT systems, the data of work products is
linked with the help of interfaces between different technical components. Resources support the
execution of the business process.

Interfaces and IT Systems
The activities (e.g. SAP process steps and transactions) are supported by IT systems. By the knowledge of
this support it is clear if a transition links to statements executed in different IT systems. The statement



associated work products have to be serialized and transformed using an interface between the two
different IT systems. It is very important to review this interface link in the execution of test cases.

Work Products and Deliverables
To properly describe test data and functional use case success criteria it is important to know which work
products are processed in the end-to-end business scenario.

Organizational and Resource Assignments
Finally, the organization and resources supporting the execution of statements being responsible,
accountable, controlled and informed (RACI) have extensive business knowledge which in many cases is
not described by Blueprint documents. They know e.g. how to handle exceptions in workflows, or know
about probabilities of executing branches in complex workflows. The algorithm uses this information for
cost optimization of test case analysis.

Costs Optimization of Test Case Analysis
In the case of test case coverage C2 or C3, the potential number of possible test cases can be very large.
The calculation of execution probabilities or execution costs can be used to reduce the number of test
cases to be executed, e.g. to avoid the execution of test cases belonging to quantiles with lesser
probability like the first quartile [WP.1].

End-to-End Process Execution Probability
The probability of executing an end-to-end process called test case can be calculated based either on
“as-is” facts or on “to-be” estimations. As a fact in ERP, the number of transaction execution times in a
process can be used and stored as a frequency value in a statement attribute. As an alternative, an
execution probability can be assigned to branches of gateways expressing explicit rules like exclusive
XOR, inclusive OR, and AND. For the case of methodically possible implicit rules, the value of probability
is stored in the transition.

The probability of an end-to-end scenario is the product of all existing probabilities of statement
transitions passed through. For a simple case with a number of 2 XOR-rules with 2 branches each, there
are 4 possible test cases with a overall probability of 0,25 for each test case. The probability of the test
case is calculated and stored in the Probability attribute of model describing the test case.

Effort Weighted Testing
To calculate the time effort of executing a test case, a weight factor can describe the effort to test
statement. The standard value per default is 1. For a complex statements to be executed, the weight can
be increased or decreased for simple statements. The overall effort of a test case is stored in a model
attribute Effort.

Conclusion

Depending on the complexity of the business process to be tested, an approach using C1 for branch
coverage is practically sufficient. Using C2 or C3 delivers too many test cases with high effort to test all



end-to-end variations. For very complex process models it will not be possible to generate and test all
possible test cases. For e.g. 20 XOR gateways we would have a number of more than 1M test cases. For a
standard PC with 100 test cases generated per second it takes 3h to calculate in memory all possible
variations for this process model. For this reason the algorithm uses an Exception parameter to avoid the
time costly generation of too many C2 or C3 test cases.

Methodology for Test Case Generation
For the purpose of the automatic generation of test cases based on Blueprint business process models
an integrative methodology is developed. The methodology considers three phases to control the risk of
business impact by insufficiently tested end-to-end processes and to lower the efforts for integration
testing.

1. ERP Solution blueprinting

2. Test case generation

3. End-to-end testing

Figure 5 Solution for model based testing

ERP Solution Blueprinting
As already stated, blueprinting an ERP solution using tools for business process analysis (BPA) delivers
many benefits. For e.g. SAP® ERP the project method SAP® Accelerate SAP (ASAP) defines the Blueprint



project phase before the realization phase starts that includes the testing of software. While a BPA tool
captures and documents business requirements for subsequent analyzing and business improvement,
the SAP Solution Manager (SSM) tool is used for the documentation of the Blueprint by means of a
structured IT view containing business scenarios, processes and process steps with linked SAP
transactions. The SSM includes a test management that is integrated with the Blueprint.

Modeling Method
It is a characteristic of the BPM market that BPA tools use many different modeling methods (commonly
nicknamed as a “modeling language”). The latter use a set of specific rules to describe a business process
control flow and its relationships between processes, activities, resources, work products and the
organization. The methods use various notations with symbols to visually express the organizational or
process models by diagrams. In general, methods can be distinguished into legacy or vendor specific
methods, and standard methods like BPMN developed and controlled by the Object Management Group
(OMG).

Today, what is mainly used are variants of flowcharting methods, Event-Process-Chain (EPC) variants and
variations of BPMN-based methods. Even if a vendor claims that the promoted BPA tool uses a standard
method, in most cases the tool implements a specific method version, or a method subset or extension
as compared to the standard method.

For model data exchange, BPA tools use mostly vendor specific XML formats. To interchange model data
between tools of different vendors one can use standard formats like XMI (OMG) or XPDL (Workflow
Management Coalition - WfMC).

However because of variations in three dimensions

1. Implementation of modeling standard

2. Implementation of exchange format standard

3. BPM vendor commercial interests

in many cases unexpected results occur when importing process models from a different BPA tool into
the tool used. The US Department of Defense (DoD) made a review using standards BPMN and XPDL for
model data interchange [MZM09 page 10]. No tool was capable of importing error-free models from
another tool. Sometimes the tools failed to import its own (!) created export format.

Model and Diagram Data Interchange
To overcome the known problem of interoperability between tools and modeling standards, the BPM-
Xchange® (BPM-X) middleware for the interchange of model, master and meta data is available. This
software solution establishes interoperability in the enterprise management systems landscape of an
organization. This approach eliminates existing silos of enterprise meta-data information and avoids
efforts of manually re-keying or re-mapping existing model data or visual diagrams. The automatic
conversion model and diagram improves the quality of exchanged data and reduces needed human



interactivity. The BPM-X middleware is an Enterprise Integration Application (EAI) framework for the
execution of transformation sequences. The framework uses inbound and outbound adapters to read
and write tool or standard-specific data formats. For standard formats like XPDL, BPM-X offers support
for different versions and so called flavors to support vendor specific implementations of exchange
standards. To eliminate vendor specific (standard) methods, BPM-X uses pattern-based rules for
transformations of model and diagram data described by tool specific methods.

The automated process using BPM-X mainly consists of five steps, namely to

1. Export data from the supplier tool, database or repository

2. Import data into a BPM-X repository neutral model representation using an inbound adapter

3. Optionally improve model consistency

4. Execute a sequence of model transformations from supplier into consumer methods

5. Export into consumer tool format using an outbound adapter and import into the consumer tool

In the case of model-based testing, the BPA tool is the supplier tool exporting the business process
models. The consumer tools are testing tools like HP Quality Center (QC), SAP Solution Manager (SSM),
or Microsoft Word in case of manual testing.

Figure 6 Generic model transformation into BPMN using BPM-X middleware



Generation of Test Cases
BPMN Method Internally Used
A process model is managed by the supplier BPA tool described by a specific method. A method consists
of a meta model and a diagram notation for the visual modeling of a diagram. In addition, modeling
rules describe possible patterns that cannot be expressed through the meta model. Commonly the meta
model plus notation is called a modeling language. From the point of view of generating test cases, this is
an external method. The model data including the visual diagrams is loaded into the BPM-X middleware
repository still using the external method.

Figure 7 Test-case model based on BPMN

Internally, BPM-X organizes its repository with model instances allowing several logical representations
of the same model within one physical repository. To have a common initial point for the generation of
test cases, BPM-X initially transforms the models stored in one model instance (1) into a new model
instance (2). For test case generation, the internal method used is BPMN. This operation provides a
normalization of a specific model method into the BPMN method.

During this transformation of the business process, included work product objects are associated with
activities by associations. Resources such as organizational units, groups, roles or IT applications are
converted to so-called “performers”. Process activities, transactions or interfaces are converted to tasks,
sub-processes or call activities.



Test Case Generation Based on the BPMN Method
BPM-X middleware offers a flexible framework to execute transformations in a sequence of so called
atomic operations (AO). With an application programming interface (API), developers can develop own
AO’s. MBT is developed as a BPM-X AO to implement the test case generation.

Based on the model data stored in the instance (2) the software generates test case models and stores
them in a new instance (3). The test case models are also described by the BPMN method. The algorithm
described in Chapter “A test case is an end-to-end business scenario as a sequence of activities to be
executed sequentially. The process logic is explicitly formulated by using logical rules commonly
expressed with exclusive execution (XOR), parallel execution (AND) and inclusive execution (OR) of a
branch in the process flow. The OR rule is complex to understand. It can be comprehended as a
combination of a XOR and an AND rule [OS08]. Because process activities can consists of human or
system atomic tasks (atomic means here that a task cannot be divided further into subtasks, like a SAP
transaction), a sub process is defined by several tasks or a process interface. We use statements as
designation of activities in a test case. The statements are linked by transitions to the logical flow of an
end-to-end scenario.

” can be easily modified or replaced to deliver alternative generated test cases. The following figure
shows the first four test cases generated on the sample SAP business process model. Based on this
specific example including 4 XOR gateways with 2 branches each, a total of 24 equal 16 possible test
cases can be generated.



Figure 8 A set of test-case models automatically generated on business process model

Linking with Testing Tools
Once the test case models are available within the model instance (3), BPM-X AOs can transform the test
cases into an external format for a testing tool.

Figure 9 Export to Testing Tool

These generated test case models can be converted into the model representation described by a
consumer method and data format. E.g. export is possible into XPDL format for test case processing in
HP QC, into SSM Blueprint projects or into Visio for manual test case documentation.



Table 3 Examples for Testing Tools and external formats

Tool Format Description
HP QC XPDL V2.0 or V2.1 Load test cases into HP QC based on XPDL
SAP Solution Manager Word-Document Use tab “test-case” with type “manual test case” using
T-Code SOLAR02 Word documents can be used to assign the test case
documents to a blueprint structure
SAP Solution Manager Blueprint Project Implementation project with Scenarios and uploaded
T-Code SOLAR01 Processes for each test case model and Process-Steps
for activities.
Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Visio Documentation, analyzing and manual execution of test
cases

Summary
This whitepaper addresses the integrated solution of test management using business process models
from the ERP Blueprint as a basis of automatically generated test cases for further use in a testing tool or
manual testing. Using the BPM-X integration middleware for software interoperability builds a very
flexible software solution for the interoperability of any BPA tools to be linked to a testing tool. The
BPM-X framework allows the development specific operations like the discussed test case generation.
This new operation can be linked into the chain of transformations starting from the import of business
process models, through transformations of model data by different methods into BPMN, to the export
of test cases in a specific data format used by the testing tool.

This concept of testing is much more business-focused instead of isolated functional testing not fully
covering business logic and technical interfaces that supports data flow between business activities.

The approach ensures the completeness of test case coverage to improve the quality of ERP supported
business processes and lower the impact of weakly tested end-to-end scenarios.

Costs

At least 50% efforts are reduced by automatically generated test cases. By re-using business know-how
from business process models defining probabilities of process flows, the test cases can be prioritized
only re-testing an appropriate number of test cases when software changes and not the full set of test
cases for a business process that is very time consuming in execution of the test cases.

Integration of test case tools like HP QC or SSM Blueprint test management or test projects speeds up
the handling of test cases in complex ERP projects, as compared to manual analysis and description of
test cases especially when the test cases change through change requests.

By examining end-to-end business scenarios with high probabilities, the automation of tests with tools
like HP Loadrunner or SAP eCATT scripts save big amounts of time by re-running theses test during
change requests or ERP maintenance.



The overall efforts are greatly reduced for costly resources of the QA team and business key-users.

Risks

Many business executives have concerns about the quality and resulting costs for implementation and
maintenance of ERP software. By using the model based approach for integration testing, the business
impact of insufficiently tested ERP software is eliminated. By the re-use of business logic given by
process models and execution probabilities combined with systematic execution of prioritized end-to-
end scenarios, the relevant states of a business processes are reviewed. This includes identification and
explicit testing of interfaces for exchange of data between activities supported by different involved ERP
and 3rd party software components.

A more methodical and tool-supported approach by using tools like QC or SSM lowers the risk of
influence of inexperienced QA team members and insufficient project time available for testing.

For revisions of business software, automatically generated test documentation can be used to audit and
review test cases.

Quality

Using business process models as a basis of their generation, the test cases re-use documented process
knowledge. The use of BI technology to analyze test case data and the visual documentation of test case
diagrams improves the analytical understanding of end-to-end business scenarios. Based on test cases it
is much easier to define appropriate test data for integration and for functional use case testing.

The integrated approach addresses the impact given by business requirement changes to test cases in
the ERP project cycle or during the maintenance of ERP. The changed test cases can be re-tested again to
eliminate side effects of software changes.

At the bottom line, the described methodology of the model-based generation of test cases
complements the concept of using BPM for ERP Blueprinting. This establishes an optimal alignment
between the business and IT.

Bibliography
[OS08] Zur automatischen Ermittlung von Testszenarien aus EPK-Schemata, Oliver Skroch, 2008
[WP.1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartile
[WP.2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statement_Coverage
[MZM09] Enterprise Architecture based on Design Primitives and Patterns Guidelines for the Design
of Business Process Models (DoDAF OV-6c) using BPMN, Michael zur Muehlen, 2009
[MAI11] Graph Theory and Algorithms, M. Ashraf Iqbal, 2011


Model based testing for Integration and Regression Tests in ERP

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