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Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

Chapter 8 –
Software

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

Testing
LECTURER: A.PROF. DR. AMR THABET
REFERENCE: IAN SOMMERVILLE, “SOFTWARE ENGINEERING”, 10TH EDITION,
2015
Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet
Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015
2
Topics covered

Test-driven development
Release testing
User testing
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Test-driven development 3

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Test-driven development (TDD) is an approach to
program development in which you inter-leave
testing and code development.

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

 Tests are written before code and ‘passing’ the
tests is the critical driver of development.
 You develop code incrementally, along with a
test for that increment. You don’t move on to the
next increment until the code that you have
developed passes its test.
 TDD was introduced as part of agile methods
such as Extreme Programming. However, it can
also be used in plan-driven development
processes.
Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet
Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015
4
Test-driven development
TDD process activities 5

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Start by identifying the increment of functionality
that is required. This should normally be small and
implementable in a few lines of code.

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

 Write a test for this functionality and implement
this as an automated test.
 Run the test, along with all other tests that have
been implemented. Initially, you have not
implemented the functionality so the new test will
fail.
 Implement the functionality and re-run the test.
 Once all tests run successfully, you move on to
implementing the next chunk of functionality.
Benefits of test-driven 6

development

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Code coverage
 Every code segment that you write has at least one

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

associated test so all code written has at least one test.
 Regression testing
 A regression test suite is developed incrementally as a
program is developed.
 Simplified debugging
 When a test fails, it should be obvious where the
problem lies. The newly written code needs to be
checked and modified.
 System documentation
 The tests themselves are a form of documentation that
describe what the code should be doing.
Regression testing 7

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Regression testing is testing the system to check
that changes have not ‘broken’ previously

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

working code.
 In a manual testing process, regression testing is
expensive but, with automated testing, it is simple
and straightforward. All tests are rerun every time
a change is made to the program.
 Tests must run ‘successfully’ before the change is
committed.
Release testing 8

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Release testing is the process of testing a particular release of a
system that is intended for use outside of the development team.
 The primary goal of the release testing process is to convince the

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

supplier of the system that it is good enough for use.
 Release testing, therefore, has to show that the system delivers its
specified functionality, performance and dependability, and that it
does not fail during normal use.
 Release testing is usually a black-box testing process where tests
are only derived from the system specification.
Release testing and 9

system testing

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Release testing is a form of system testing.
 Important differences:

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

 A separate team that has not been involved in the
system development, should be responsible for
release testing.
 System testing by the development team should
focus on discovering bugs in the system (defect
testing). The objective of release testing is to check
that the system meets its requirements and is good
enough for external use (validation testing).
Requirements based 10

testing

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Requirements-based testing involves examining
each requirement and developing a test or tests

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

for it.
 MHC-PMS requirements:
 If a patient is known to be allergic to any particular
medication, then prescription of that medication
shall result in a warning message being issued to the
system user.
 If a prescriber chooses to ignore an allergy warning,
they shall provide a reason why this has been
ignored.
Requirements tests 11

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Set up a patient record with no known allergies. Prescribe
medication for allergies that are known to exist. Check
that a warning message is not issued by the system.

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

 Set up a patient record with a known allergy. Prescribe the
medication to that the patient is allergic to, and check
that the warning is issued by the system.
 Set up a patient record in which allergies to two or more
drugs are recorded. Prescribe both of these drugs
separately and check that the correct warning for each
drug is issued.
 Prescribe two drugs that the patient is allergic to. Check
that two warnings are correctly issued.
 Prescribe a drug that issues a warning and overrule that
warning. Check that the system requires the user to
provide information explaining why the warning was
overruled.
Features tested by 12

scenario

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Authentication by logging on to the system.
 Downloading and uploading of specified patient

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

records to a laptop.
 Home visit scheduling.
 Encryption and decryption of patient records on
a mobile device.
 Record retrieval and modification.
 Links with the drugs database that maintains side-
effect information.
 The system for call prompting.
A usage scenario for the 13

MHC-PMS

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

Kate is a nurse who specializes in mental health care. One of her responsibilities
is to visit patients at home to check that their treatment is effective and that they
are not suffering from medication side -effects.
On a day for home visits, Kate logs into the MHC-PMS and uses it to print her
schedule of home visits for that day, along with summary information about the
patients to be visited. She requests that the records for these patients be

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

downloaded to her laptop. She is prompted for her key phrase to encrypt the
records on the laptop.
One of the patients that she visits is Jim, who is being treated with medication for
depression. Jim feels that the medication is helping him but believes that it has the
side -effect of keeping him awake at night. Kate looks up Jim’s record and is
prompted for her key phrase to decrypt the record. She checks the drug
prescribed and queries its side effects. Sleeplessness is a known side effect so
she notes the problem in Jim’s record and suggests that he visits the clinic to have
his medication changed. He agrees so Kate enters a prompt to call him when she
gets back to the clinic to make an appointment with a physician. She ends the
consultation and the system re-encrypts Jim’s record.
After, finishing her consultations, Kate returns to the clinic and uploads the records
of patients visited to the database. The system generates a call list for Kate of
those patients who she has to contact for follow-up information and make clinic
appointments.
Performance testing 14

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Part of release testing may involve testing the
emergent properties of a system, such as

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

performance and reliability.
 Tests should reflect the profile of use of the system.
 Performance tests usually involve planning a series
of tests where the load is steadily increased until
the system performance becomes unacceptable.
 Stress testing is a form of performance testing
where the system is deliberately overloaded to
test its failure behaviour.
User testing 15

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 User or customer testing is a stage in the testing
process in which users or customers provide input

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

and advice on system testing.
 User testing is essential, even when
comprehensive system and release testing have
been carried out.
 The reason for this is that influences from the user’s
working environment have a major effect on the
reliability, performance, usability and robustness of
a system. These cannot be replicated in a testing
environment.
Types of user testing 16

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Alpha testing
 Users of the software work with the development

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

team to test the software at the developer’s site.
 Beta testing
 A release of the software is made available to users
to allow them to experiment and to raise problems
that they discover with the system developers.
 Acceptance testing
 Customers test a system to decide whether or not it
is ready to be accepted from the system
developers and deployed in the customer
environment. Primarily for custom systems.
Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet
Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015
17
The acceptance testing
process
Stages in the acceptance 18

testing process

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 Define acceptance criteria
 Plan acceptance testing

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

 Derive acceptance tests
 Run acceptance tests
 Negotiate test results
 Reject/accept system
Agile methods and 19

acceptance testing

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 In agile methods, the user/customer is part of the
development team and is responsible for making

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

decisions on the acceptability of the system.
 Tests are defined by the user/customer and are
integrated with other tests in that they are run
automatically when changes are made.
 There is no separate acceptance testing process.
 Main problem here is whether or not the
embedded user is ‘typical’ and can represent the
interests of all system stakeholders.
Key points 20

Reference: Ian Sommerville, “Software engineering”, 10th edition, 2015

 When testing software, you should try to ‘break’ the
software by using experience and guidelines to choose
types of test case that have been effective in discovering

Lecturer: A.Prof. Dr. Amr Thabet

defects in other systems.
 Wherever possible, you should write automated tests. The
tests are embedded in a program that can be run every
time a change is made to a system.
 Test-first development is an approach to development
where tests are written before the code to be tested.
 Scenario testing involves inventing a typical usage
scenario and using this to derive test cases.
 Acceptance testing is a user testing process where the aim
is to decide if the software is good enough to be deployed
and used in its operational environment.