??? Testers not only manually test the features but create/write unit tests and script automated tests
as well.
48
Manage Software Testing
??? The company not only creates a daily build for each platform but tests it thoroughly such that at
any time after the first of the three development phases, it has a shippable product. See section
18.13 in Chapter 18 for some metrics concerning this.
??? The functional specifications (in Microsoft??™s case typically written by product managers) are
reviewed and untestable requirements identified.
??? The monitoring of the state of each feature enables testers to determine what levels of features
are in a release. In Microsoft up to 30% of the feature set can change, many low priority features
are deleted as deadlines loom.
??? The interactions between features be identified and tested for as subtle interactions can prove
disastrous. (Example: version 6 of MS Word for Windows would crash were a table, inserted in a
footer
, to have its cell widths adjusted. Windows 2004 has subtle timing interactions between the
toolbar and the text which scripting exposes. The predecessor of Access was simply thrown away.)
The test manager must thus find a way of identifying potential interactions, and testing for them.
Solution: write a feature??“feature interaction matrix showing which features cannot interact with
which, and the names of the tests which cover the feature??“feature interaction of those which do
(see Figure 15.
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