TRACEABILITY MATRIX PREPARATION

Test Case and Requirements Traceability Preparation

Content

·         Test Case Preparation

·         Requirement Traceability Matrix

Test Case Preparation

Contents

·         What’s a Test Case?

·         Why a Test Case?

·         If No Test Case?

·         Inputs for Writing Test Cases

·         Generating Test Cases

·         Preparation of a Test Case

·         Test Case Format

·         Review of Test Case

·         Good Test Cases

·         Limitations of Test Cases

·         Requirements Traceability

·         Workshop on Test Cases

What is a Test Case?

Test Case is a set of detailed steps that needs to be followed to execute the test scenario along with the expected outcome for one or more inputs

Why a Test Case?

·         Test cases are required to ensure that all the functionalities are tested completely i.e. test coverage is ensured

·         Helps to find identify gaps in the requirements

·         Necessary to verify successful and acceptable implementation of the product requirements.

·         Determine whether we meet the Client expectations.

·         Help managers make ship / no-ship decisions based on the test case results

If No Test Case?

Absence of Test Case document results in -

·         No process adherence

·         Poor Quality of the deliverables to the Client     

·         Increases the time taken for execution

·         Dependency on module owner for testing

·         No Requirements Coverage tracking

Inputs for Writing Test Cases

Inputs for writing a Test Case:

·         Business Requirement / Functional Specification Document / Use case

·         Prototype

·         High level Test Scenarios

Generating Test Cases

Following is the four-step process for generating test cases from a fully detailed use case/FS –

·         For each use case / FS, generate a full set of high level test scenarios.

·         For each high level test scenario, identify at least one positive / negative test case and the conditions that will make it “execute”.

·         For each test case, identify the data values with which to test.

·         Document the test case as a combination of steps and expected results including the above identified data values.

Preparation of a Test Case

·         Need to ensure each section in Use case / Functional Specification has one or many test cases.

·         Need to ensure Integrity between modules is maintained throughout the test cases.

·         Need to ensure inter dependencies external to the System are taken care in test cases.

Test Case Format

Test Case document should contain the following key areas:

Review of Test Cases

Why Review?

·         Review of Test Cases helps us to determine -

·         Whether the requirements given by the Client matches with the functional points written using a Test Case      

·         Whether all the requirements are covered during Test Case preparation

·         The adequacy of Test Cases

Good Test Cases

·         Easy and quick to determine the result - simple enough to clearly succeed or fail

·         Contain verifiable results

·         Self explanatory - Executable by other Testers

·         Short - testing one limited subset of a feature or functionality

·         Accurate

·         Maintainable

·         Repeatable

·         Traceable

·         Efficient

Limitations of Test Cases

·         Test Cases cannot be Exhaustive

Requirement Traceability Matrix

What is Requirement Traceability?

·         It is the tracing of links between the stakeholders' requirements and the deliverables produced during the software development lifecycle.

·         It is a document that helps the project team traces the higher level requirements through detailed requirements and design, down to the individual software units including the test components.

The Objectives of Requirement Traceability, in general, are to -

·         Ensure that the deliverables meet the requirement / specification.

·         Ensure that no requirements are missed and therefore that all are delivered.

·         Identify which deliverables implement which requirements.

·         Identify any deliverables that cannot be traced back to a requirement. This may be either due to undocumented requirements or to the unnecessary introduction of “FEATURES” that are not actually required by the stakeholders.

Requirement Traceability and Test Cases

·         Every requirement should be traced to the individual test cases.

·         This is required -

·         To ensure that all the requirements have been covered in the test cases.

·         To ensure that the test cases do not test functionality that is not required by the stakeholders.

·         To identify what tests are necessary to verify a particular requirement has been implemented successfully.

·         This is generally done by listing out all the requirements and noting the test scenarios and test cases corresponding to these requirements against it.

·         The traceability is hence drawn from the

Requirements Traceability Matrix

Sample Requirements Traceability Matrix

Workshop on Test Preparation

Case Study

·         Use case will be provided using which the following need to be created:

·         Detail test cases

·         Requirement traceability matrix

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