Article by: Suresh Nageswaran
Test Engineering covers a large gamut of activities to ensure that the final product achieves some quality goal. These activities must be planned well in advance to ensure that these objectives are met. Plans are based on estimations.
In the early years, the Waterfall model has been applied to software development. This model looks upon test engineering as merely a stage in the entire development lifecycle. When techniques evolved over the years for estimating development time and effort, the concept of estimating test-engineering time was overlooked completely.
Test engineering is seldom planned for in most organizations and as a result, products enter the market insufficiently tested. Negative customer reactions and damage to the corporate image is the natural consequence. To avoid this, the correct development lifecycle must be chosen and planning should be done
early on in the cycle.
Use Cases
A use case captures a contract between the stakeholders of a system about its behavior. The use case describes the system’s behavior under various conditions as it responds to a request from one of the stakeholders, called the primary actor. The primary actor initiates an interaction with the system to accomplish some goal. The system responds, protecting the interests of all the stakeholders. Different sequences of behavior, or scenarios, can unfold, depending on the particular requests made and conditions
surrounding the requests. The use case collects together those different scenarios.
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Very nice introduction to use case point estimating. I’ve used the technique with great results in both small and large projects. It’s a very effective means of sanity testing developer estimates and as another set of data from which to triangulate towards a realistic schedule.
CaseComplete (www.casecomplete.com), a use case driven requirements management tool, incorporates use case point estimates into the tool. I am biased – I work for the publisher – but you can download the free trial and use the generated excel workbook to try out use case points.
As you develop more information about your team and environment, the resolution of your use case point based estimates will improve pretty dramatically.