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Identifying What to Test by Using Test Inputs

Chapter 2 - Planning Tests

Identifying What to Test by Using Test Inputs

When you first start your test planning, your goal is to build a checklist of all of the
things that need to be tested.

One way to start planning is to look at any available source materials that can help
you determine what you need to test. For example, you can look at:

Prototypes

Builds of the software

Functional specifications

Requirements

Visual models

Source code files

Change requests

You as a tester might look at all of these materials to help you decide, "What do I need
to test?" These materials are your test inputs. They are inputs to the planning phase.
They help you build the checklist of the things you need to test.

After you build this checklist, you can create test cases. The test cases define what you
are going to test, based on the test inputs. You can then associate the test cases with
the test inputs for tracking purposes. By setting up these associations, you can more
easily track changes to the test inputs that might result in changes to the test cases or
their implementations. For information, see Test Impact Analysis on page 53.

You can also run reports to identify the test inputs that have test cases and
implementations associated with them, and to identify which of those test cases have
been run. For example, analysts might be interested in reports based on requirements.
Architects might be interested in reports based on model elements. For information
about reports, see Reporting Results on page 173.

Almost anything can be a test input. TestManager provides built-in test input types,
and you can also define custom test input types as your testing environment requires.

To view the available test inputs:

Click

View > Test Inputs

to open the Test Input window.

Note:

For detailed procedures, see the TestManager Help.