Managing the Testing Process: Practical Tools and Techniques for Managing Hardware and Software Testing

2.11. Exit Criteria

Exit criteria address the issue of how to determine when testing has been completed. For example, one exit criterion might be that all the planned test cases and the regression tests have been run. Another might be that project management deems your results "O K," by whatever definition they use to decide such questions. (I'll look at some metrics that can shed light on product quality in Chapter 4, "An Exciting Career in Entomology Awaits You: A Bug Tracking Database," and Chapter 5, "Managing Test Cases: The Test Tracking Spreadsheet," along with examining some political issues associated with results reporting in Chapter 9, "The Triumph of Politics: Organizational Challenges for Test Managers.") In the case of System Test exit criteria—provided System Test is the last test phase on your project—these exit criteria often become the criteria by which the customer-ship or deployment decision is made. An example of a businessdriven set of System Test exit criteria for SpeedyWriter is shown in Figure 2.5.

Figure 2.3. Entry criteria for SpeedyWriter.

Figure 2.4. Continuation criteria for SpeedyWriter.

Figure 2.5. SpeedyWriter System Test exit criteria.