Structured testing in practice

The IT-market has been growing dramatically in the last 15 years. Software tries to solve complex problems of the real world. In addition, customers’ expectations concerning the quality of the software are rising steadily. Therefore, testing the software before it is delivered to a customer is a necessity. While testing software completely is impossible, the test department must use techniques in order to test critical parts in the software first. Furthermore, the test department has to provide best possible information about the quality of the software achieved through passing several tests. This requirement can be met only if testing is a structured and monitored process. This thesis presents the implementation of an approach which understandsstructured software testing as an integrated part of the software development life-cycle. The approach is based on several established models from software development, quality assurance, and software testing. These models are discussed together with different commercial, in-house, and Open Source tools used for the implementation of the approach. A framework is described for automated test execution, test results processing, archiving of test data, and web based test data management. An example is given where this framework has been introduced to a software company. Based on a specific quality approach the measurable quality improvement of the test process due to the introduction of the framework is presented.