Evidence Evidence Evidence

When you are testing a system of any kind something that you must maintain for everything is evidence. This is like the holy grail of testing.

For planning you need a record of:

• What you are testing?
• What steps you are running?
• Why you are testing?
• What order they should be run in?
• What inputs and outputs are expected?
• Who is testing what?
• How many resources?
• When to start testing?
• When to stop testing?

and many more things..

for execution you need a record of:

• Has entry criteria been met?
• What succeeded and failed?
• What tests were run?
• What defects were raised?
• How long it took?
• Current progress
• Has exit criteria been met?

We need this to be able to:

• Provide informed opinions on the quality of a peice of software.
• To display value for money of the testing process (it pains me that we would ever need to prove this... but keeps me on my toes.)
• To feed back traceable defects for correction by the rest of the development team.
• To be able to prioritise and organise a workable solution within time and budget.

etc..

but what really gets me going is that all this is required by testing.. so why is it that requirements gathering and the system development itself is allowed to relatively escape producing the same kind of documentation and accountability is always placed firmly at the testers door.