TOOL-BASED TESTING FRAMEWORK FOR AGILE DEVELOPMENT:TESTING IN THE FAST LANE

I. What is it about?

I have long been an advocate of stand-up meetings, iterations and incremental development and that is why this book. Testing plays a crucial role for any project or product development involving complex business domain knowledge. Customers who are being impacted due to large turnaround time of the waterfall model are not ready to wait till all the development is over. Such customers wish to have short releases having development for a couple of weeks to build up the confidence level. For such a short span of time, doing rigorous testing manually is virtually an impossible task. There is a strong need of a tool-based approach that would ensure continuous integration and build management, and also be effective in terms of cost, time and resources. Similarly a testing strategy would be needed for applications or products which are built on the basis of continuous evolving requirements. This book aims at defining a testing strategy and a testing framework using a tool-based approach. It explores and analyzes different methodologies and tools that can be used for agile testing. The processes covered under the strategy would be unit testing, static analysis of code, script based testing, business components incontainer and out-container testing, etc.

The testing strategy and the framework would serve as a standard best practice guideline for testing of any agile development project. It would provide customizable sample scripts that could be reused in projects.

II. Who is it written for? Software testers, test planners, test managers and quality assurance (QA) personnel. This book has a much wider audience than just pertaining to the IT space or the QA department. It is applicable to students of computer engineering and management, project managers, developers and support groups as well.

III. Objectives of the Book

1. Study the testing process for agile development.

2. Define testing strategy.

3. Study of various testing tools for implementation.

4. Construct a tool-based testing framework.

5. Demonstrate the effectiveness of this framework for both .NET and Java-based projects.

The following list of tools is used for performing specific tasks and actions for the related testing phases of the .NET and Java project life cycles, respectively.

Sr. Phase .NET Tools Java Tools No.

1. Unit Testing NUnit and NUnitASP Junit, Cactus, Jtest

2. System WinRunner, NUnit WinRunner, Testing JTestCase

3. Code NCover and NCover JTest Coverage Viewer

4. Code ANTS Profiler Optimizeit, JProbe Profiling

5. Build NAnt, Cruise Ant, CruiseControl Management Control.NET

6. Load Testing LoadRunner LoadRunner

7. Code Quality Total .Net Analyzer JTest, Jalopy Check IV. Scope and Methodology

A. SCOPE

1. Define testing process.

2. Define testing framework.

3. Explore use of tools for the framework.

4. Framework re alization for both .NET and Java-based applications.

B. METHODOLOGY

1. Identify classical testing methodology drawbacks.

2. Need of agile testing methodology.

3. Literature survey of agile testing methodologies and approaches.

4. Survey of tools and their features.

5. Define testing strategy.

6. Construct a tool-based testing framework.(xiv)

7. Collection of statistics to demonstrate benefits of testing strategy and framework by conducting case studies.

V. Why read it?

Going agile encourages a development life cycle that supports frequent inspections and short incremental releases. Apart from these factors, it also encourages a team culture of collaboration and self-organizing performance units. How agile helps the team and individuals: agile software testing assists teams in creating a more effective software development process with numerous benefits, and it also encourages personal success and self-improvement. Developers, testers and QA professionals learn how to prevent bugs rather than just find them. Managers achieve simplicity and transparency—the ability to see what has been accomplished on an iteration-by-iteration basis. And for the developer, this means work will no longer go unnoticed and that s/he will learn to write code only for what s/he needs at the moment, making it flexible for change.

VI. Key Features Each chapter begins with a clear introduction and ends with questions for reflection for readers to test their understanding of the material. The book is divided into 3 parts:

Part 1 deals with the changing landscape of the testing scene. It talks about what makes agile so different from traditional testing and how it can bring about a gamut of benefits. This section is about getting started, going in circles and then getting on course. The chapters in this section take a look at the core components needed for keeping pace with fast-evolving requirements—the testing strategy.

Part 2 is about getting the testing strategy in full speed ahead and building a conducive collaborative culture through the testing framework. The first chapter in this section discusses the framework dimensions, critical success factors and the various types of testing and their attributes. The next 2 chapters detail out the testing strategy implementation using the tool-based testing framework for 2 flavors— Java and .NET environment. Along with this, 2 chapters are devoted to actual tool specifics for both the flavors with screenshots and detailed explanation.

Part 3 is all about measuring real-world success. Two live case studies using the strategy and framework are shared in this section along with actual statistics and findings. There is also a concluding chapter about the future of agile.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chitra G. Lele is a management consultant, author and poet. She holds degrees in computer management and software engineering. She has several certifications in project management to her credit. She has attended several international seminars on business, management and technology-related aspects. She has regularly contributed articles to reputed magazines and newspapers worldwide. Some of Chitras recent achievements include the Letter of Commendation from the President of India for her literary and peace efforts and Creative Giant Award 2009 from the Home of Letters (India) for her contribution in the field of literature. She has also been honoured with the Peace Maker Award from the Peace Writers Organization (USA). Her writings have received appreciation letters from world leaders and organizations like the President of Ireland, President of Croatia, Premier of British Columbia, The World Peace Organization and many more. Chitras global vision and observant eye, coupled with useful insights, provide a blueprint for positive changes in life. She is a prolific writer and is currently engaged in a number of writing projects.