As a coder, it’s important to understand the role of testing in the development process. Testing is a crucial step in ensuring that your code is correct, reliable, and meets the requirements of the project.
First, let’s define what we mean by “testing to requirements“. This means that the tests you write for your code are based on the specific requirements of the project.
To ensure that your code is correct and reliable, it is important to test that it meets the specified requirements. For example, let’s say that the requirement states that a certain function must be able to handle input values within a certain range. To verify that the function can perform correctly, you should write tests that test the function with a variety of inputs within the specified range. These tests should check that the function produces the expected output when given inputs within the range, and that it behaves correctly, preventing crashes or faults when given inputs outside of the range. By running these tests, you can confirm that the function meets the requirement of being able to handle input values within the specified range.
Testing the SIN function
As an example, let’s try to properly test to requirements of a SIN function.
You can write a “perfect requirement”, that basically is the correct, mathematical definition of SIN(Ɵ) function:
The projection of a vector of radius 1 and angle Ɵ, on the Y axis
Robustness requirements:
– 𝜋 ≤ Ɵ ≤ + 𝜋 ±- 2 𝜋
SIN (±∞)=NAN
SIN (NAN) = NAN
Now it is much easier to build a simple test vector to test any kind of implementation:
In this way, you can really build some very easy testing code, or even better use a tool like VectorCAST, and be able to automate the tests, repeating them quickly and as often as you want.
The importance of testing to requirements
So why is it important for coders to care about testing to requirements? Here are a few reasons:
- Ensuring code quality: Testing to requirements helps ensure that your code is correct and reliable. By verifying that your code meets the specified requirements, you can identify and fix any bugs or errors before the code is deployed. This can save time and resources by catching problems early on in the development process.
- Meeting project deadlines: Testing to requirements can help you meet project deadlines by ensuring that your code is ready for deployment. If you don’t test your code against the requirements, you may end up with code that doesn’t work as expected, which can cause delays and missed deadlines.
- Building customer trust: Testing to requirements can help build trust with your customers. By delivering code that meets the specified requirements, you show that you are reliable and that you take the quality of your work seriously. This can help build long-term relationships with your customers and increase their confidence in your abilities.
- Avoiding costly mistakes: Testing to requirements can help you avoid costly mistakes. If you don’t test your code against the requirements, you may end up with code that doesn’t work as expected. This can result in wasted time and resources, and can even lead to lost business if your customers are dissatisfied with the quality of your work.
Requirements-based testing
Requirements-based testing (RBT) is a technique that helps companies address two major issues: making sure that the requirements are formally correct, complete, consistent, and not ambiguous; and creating a sufficient number of test cases from those requirements to ensure that the design and code meet those requirements from a Black Box perspective. The main challenge in developing tests is to limit the huge number of potential tests to a manageable amount and to ensure that the tests get the expected results for the intended purpose.
The main strategy of RBT is to incorporate testing throughout the development process and place a strong emphasis on the quality of the requirements specification. This leads to early detection of defects, which is much less costly than finding faults later in the integration testing process. In addition to focusing on defect detection, RBT also focuses on defect prevention.
An easy-to-understand example for the requirements-based approach is taking an exam at school. This is especially interesting if you consider it from the perspective of the professor who wrote the exam and the professor who will be grading it.
An expert professor writes the exam question, and other experts with a deep understanding of the subject write the official solution to the question, after reviewing it to ensure accuracy. The process of comparing a student’s work to the official solution is simple and can be automated.
Similarly, in the RBT process for testing code, a domain expert writes the requirements. Another expert derives test cases with expected results, using the RBT approach. Finally, the process of comparing the expected results to the actual values produced by the code can be easily automated using a tool like VectorCAST. The goal of this process is to ensure that the code meets the requirements and functions correctly.
Requirements testing and technical debt
Requirements testing can help reduce the technical debt of software in several ways:
- Early defect detection: By testing the requirements early in the development process, defects can be identified and fixed before they become more costly to fix later on. This can prevent the accumulation of defects that contribute to technical debt.
- Defect prevention: Requirements testing not only focuses on detecting defects, but also on preventing them from occurring in the first place. By ensuring that the requirements are clear, complete, and consistent, and by writing thorough test cases based on those requirements, the likelihood of defects occurring can be significantly reduced.
- Improved code quality: Testing to requirements helps ensure that the code meets the specified requirements and functions correctly. This can improve the overall quality of the code, which can reduce the risk of technical debt accumulating due to poor code quality.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction: By delivering code that meets the requirements and functions correctly, the software is more likely to meet the needs of the customers and users. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction, which can help reduce the risk of technical debt accumulating and creating more dissatisfied customers.
- Reduced maintenance costs: By identifying and fixing defects early on, the need for maintenance and bug fixes can be reduced, which can save time and resources in the long run. This can help reduce the overall technical debt of the software and the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
Conclusions
In conclusion, testing to requirements is an important aspect of the coding process. By ensuring that your code meets the specified requirements, you can deliver high-quality code that is correct, reliable and meets the needs of your customers. This can help you build trust with your customers, avoid costly mistakes, and meet project deadlines. As a coder, it’s important to prioritize testing to ensure the success of your projects.
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- Product information: Automated testing with VectorCAST
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