Traditionally test cases are developed from system requirement specifications. This methodology inherently restricts customer-centric software testing. System testing derived from system requirement specifications misses or ignores dimensions of quality, such as usability and end-to-end solution integrity related to actual usage. Without adequate knowledge of how the end customer will actually use the system, test engineers are left with the impossible task of validating quality across isolated system components and functionality. An alternative technique of developing test cases from the use cases effectively centers product testing on actual usage scenarios of the system. Use cases contain the system functionality that delivers the core value to the customer. Deriving test cases from use cases helps to ensure that testing does in fact measure the product’s ability to deliver core value to the customer. This paper first establishes the characteristics of a good use case and then describes a method to derive effective test cases. It explores challenges such as: keeping a test case self-contained and addresses the issues of boundary conditions and negative testing in a web development environment. While the technique is effective, it is not a panacea. It is not possible to develop test cases comprehensive enough to address all possible system variations. Also, system boundaries and error conditions must be built into the use cases in order to effectively address them in testing.
展开▼
