Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Features vs. Resource Availability
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Features
Te st resources
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Time
Figure ..1
Feature increase vs. resource availability.
release (after a quarter), it took eight test engineers to verify and validate the new
version of the application in 14 business days. After 5 years the scenario was like
this. It took 180 test engineers to verify and validate the next quarterly release of
the application in 12 business days. In all releases of the software, testing execution
was done manually and no automation was used.
Question: Why did the software vendor need so many testing resources in the
later release of the application? It is because over the 5-year time span, features
in the application had increased 10-fold and the existing features had also been
enhanced considerably. Out of the 180 test engineers deployed, 50 engineers were
exclusively dedicated to regression testing. Now the regression testing suite had
grown to more than 4500 test cases. Adding, maintaining, and running the suite
of regression test cases manually had become a huge task.
From Figure 9.1 it can be seen that with increasing feature addition over time
in an application, testing resource requirements increase; however, finding these
resources is difficult.
This factor calls for automation of regression test cases.
..2
Test Automation History
When the software industry was in its infancy (the dark mainframe era!), software
testing was not a sophisticated process, as can be imagined. Almost all software
testing was manual. Then, in the client server era (1970s), MIS departments started
making their own small testing tools. Mostly it was in the areas of simulation
