The Size and Effort of Software Testing

Testing is concerned with many activities that must be performed. All these activities comprise testing. With regard to these activities, we introduce five sizes or dimensions of software testing that provide answers to the following five questions:

1. Who performs the testing? Will this job be done by developers of the software product, an independent group of specialists, or some combination of the two?
2. What software components will be tested? Will each component of the software product or a component be related to a high degree of risk?
3. When should the software be tested? Will this be an ongoing process, a type of activity performed at special milestones, or a type of activity done at the end of development?
4. How will the testing be done? Will the testing focus only on what the software product is expected to do, or how it is implemented?
5. How much testing is adequate? How to determine if enough testing has been done, or how to use the limited resources allocated for testing?

The term size (dimension) is used in the sense that each such factor represents an important consideration throughout which a certain continuum of work levels or approaches, at that each is independent of the others. Each size should be taken into account when estimating the testing effort, at the same time it is necessary to determine where in this continuum the project wishes to find its place. The decision made for any size of testing does not have any effect on decisions made for sizes. Together, these decisions determine the necessary resources, the methods used and the quality of the results of the overall testing effort. You are welcome to use services of best software testing companies to reduce the cost of manufacturing exceptional quality products or systems.  

Let us now consider each of these sizes in more detail. We will use the notion of continuum to represent each size. A continuum is a sequence of possible levels, for which it is hard to determine where one level ends and another begins. In the physical world, the visible spectrum of light is a continuum stretching from red to indigo. The orange color is contained in this spectrum, but there is no single agreement on where the orange color begins and ends. Nevertheless, this does not prevent us from using orange color or discussing its merits when choosing the coloring, say, of sports suits.