Overview of Testing - Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Software Development Life Cycle - page 6

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seats six
carries fi ve suitcases
runs on regular gas
consumes gas at a rate of 25 miles per gallon at highway speeds
has a top speed of 80 miles per hour

These requirements are the nonnegotiable design and manufacturing boundaries
set by groups other than the designers such as marketing teams, Federal regulatory
agencies, or competitors. It is the auto manufacturer's job to build a new car that does
all these things to the letter of the requirements.
With the new car requirements in hand, the test objectives become more
understandable. It is the job of the auto design tester to validate the current state of
the new car against the car's requirements. If the new car does not initially meet the
requirements (as few newly designed cars do), then it is the designer not the tester
who must improve the design to meet the requirements.
After design changes are made, it is the tester's job to revalidate the modifi ed
design against the requirements. This design, test, correct, and retest cycle continues
until the new car design meets the requirements and is completed before the car is
manufactured.
Hopefully, this discussion points out the advantage of requirements for testing
validation at every stage of creating the new car. One of the most pervasive software
testing dilemmas today is the decision of companies to build Internet core-business
applications for the fi rst time without documenting any requirements. Note :
Additional requirements testing approaches can be found in the Chapter 6 of this
textbook.
As with the user test drive, the manufacture tester has many approaches
that can be employed to validate the aspects of a new car against the car's
requirements.

Testing Approaches Used While Constructing New Cars

• plan the tests based on requirements and design specifications.

• examine blueprints and clay models.

• perform and analyze wind tunnel tests.

• perform and analyze safety tests.

• perform and validate prototype features.

drive prototype and validate operations.
This example implies an additional layer of documentation necessary for successful
testing. As previously noted, requirements tell the designers what needs to be
designed. Specifi cations (blueprints or models) are the designers' interpretation of
requirements as to how the design can be manufactured.
When the specifi cations are validated against the requirements, all the subse-
quent physical car assembly validation can be performed against the specifi cations.

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