Building a software test and regression plan

By Darryl Koivisto and Deepak Shankar, Mirabilis Design
Embedded.com (07/20/09, 07:54:00 PM EDT)

Coming up with a Test Plan is the hardest job in a product company. Engineers like to develop cool products; marketing likes to tout the list of features; and QA/Test lingers in the background with little investment and a very tiny place in the schedule. Productivity is only as great as the quality of your product.

This article discusses our experience at Mirabilis Design in developing a comprehensive test and support plan. The complexity of the software required that we split the testing into sections- Graphical User Interface, feature library, Documentation, Web Links, Simulator or analytics and Database. This allowed some of the tests to be be fully automated while others require visual inspections.

The purpose of the test plan is to maximize the product quality, test the largest number of operating scenarios, ensure that models are upward compatible and identify incorrect operations.

In addition, the Test Plan is designed to address several unique features. In the case of our software these were mixed domains simulation and hierarchical considerations for memory, virtual connection, and virtual machine operations. In our discussion of the plan we came up with we will describe these aspects of software testing:

1. Background, Scope, Defects and Failures, Compatibility, Input Combinations and Preconditions, Static vs. Dynamic Testing, Software Verification and Validation, Software Testing Team, Software Quality Assurance (SQA)
2. Concept of Baseline Functionality
3. Baseline Libraries
4. New Libraries Based on Baseline Functionality
5. Regression Testing
6. Other Specific Block Issues to be Addressed

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