QAI CSTE Glossary
Terms
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- Used to verify that data requirements support the data demands of process requirements.
- Access Modeling
- A group process that takes alrge amounts of language data, such as a list developed by brainstorming and divides into categories
- Affinity Diagram
- A single software product that may or may not fully support a business function.
- Application
- This is an inspection/assessment activity that verifies compliance with plans, policies and procedures and ensures that resources are conserved.
- Audit
- Work waiting to be done.
- Backlog
- Quantitatvie measure of the current level of performance.
- Baseline
- Comparing your company's products, services or processes against best practices or completitive practices to help define superior perfromance of a product, service or support process.
- Benchmarking
- A test or analysis conducted after an application is moved into production to determine whether it is likely to meet the orginating busines case.
- Benefits Realization Test
- A test technique that focuses on testing the functionality of the progam, component or application against its specificiations without knowledge of how the system is constructed.
- Black box testing
- A data selection technique in which test data is chosen from the boundaries of the input or output domain classes, data structures and procedure parameters.
- Boundary Value Analysis
- A group process for generating creative and diverse ideas
- Brainstorming.
- A test method that requires that eaach possible branch on each decision point be executed at least once.
- Branch Testing
- A tool used to derive tet cases from specificiations. A graph that relates causes to effects is generated. The information in the graph is converted to a decision table where the columns are the cause-effect combinations. Unique rows represent test cases
- Cause-Effect Graphing
- A series of probing questions about completeness and attributes of an application systems.
- Checklists
- Held at predefined points in the development process to evaluate whether certain quality factors are being adequately address in the system being built.
- Checkpoint Review
- Providing advice and encouragement to an individual to promote a desired behavior
- Coaching
- One version of source or object code is compared to a second version. The objective is to identify those portions of computer program that have been changed.
- Code Comparison
- Diagnostics that identify potential program flaws.
- Compiler-Based Analysis
- Applying mathematical graph thoery to programs and preliminary design language specification to determine a unit's complexity
- Complexity-Based Analysis
- A parse program looking for violations of company standards.
- Compliance Checkers
- A white-box testing technique that memasures the number o decision outcomes covered by the test cases designed.
- Condition Coverage
- Tools that are used to keep track of changes made to systems and all related artificats.
- Configuration Management Tools
- Testing of an application on all supported hardware and software platforms.
- Configuration Testing.
- Graph illustrating the flow of program control from one segment to another as illustrated through branches. Used to determine potential problems in logic branches that might result in a loop condition or improper processing.
- Control Flow Analysis
- Validates the effectiveness of data conversion processes, incuding field to field mapping, and data translation
- Conversion Testing
- Money spent beyond expected production costs to ensure that the product the customer receives is a quality product.
- Cost of Quality (COQ)
- A metric used to show the logic covered during a test session providing insight to the extent of testing.
- Coverage-Based Analysis
- The number of decision statements, plus one.
- Cyclomatic Complexity
- The process of analyzing and correcting syntactitc, logic and other errors identified during testing.
- Debugging
- A white box testing technique that measures the # of decision directions executed by the test case designed.
- Decison Coverage
- Tool for documenting the unique combinations of conditions and associated results in order to derive unique test cases for validation testing.
- Decision Table
- A product requirement that has not been met
- Producer's Defect
- Anything that causes customer dissatisfaction.
- Customer's Defect
- Tools for documenting defects as they are found during testing and for tracking their status through to resolution
- Defect Tracking Tools
- Traditional means for analyzing a system or program. Conducted by developer by reviewing the complete product to ensure that it is structrally sounds and that standards and requirements have been met.
- Desk Checking
- Code that sets up an environment and calls a module for test.
- Driver
- Analysis performed by executing the program code.
- Dynamic Analysis
- A dymanic analysis technique that inserts into the program code assertions about the relationship b/w program variables.
- Dynamic Assertion
- Giving people the knowledge, skills and authority to act within their area of expertise to do the work and improve the process.
- Empowerment
- Required conditions and standards for work product quality that must be presnet for entry into the next stage of the SDLC
- Entrance Criteria
- The input domain of a system is partitioned into classes of representitive values so that the number of test cases can be limited to one per class.
- Equivalence Partitioning
- Test data selection technique for picking values that seem likely to cause defects based upon the intuition and experience of the tester.
- Error Guessing
- Executing the program through all possible combinations of vlaues for program variables.
- Exhaustive Testing
- Standards for work product quality which block the promotion of incomplete or defective work products to subsequent stages of the SDLC
- Exit Criteria
- Pictorial representation of data flow and computer logic.
- Flowchart
- A group technique used to identify both driving and restraining forces that influence a current situation
- Force field Analysis
- Application of test data derived from the specified functional requirements w/o reqard to the final program structure.
- Functional Testing
- Graphical representation of individual measured values in a data set that is organized according to the frequency or relative frequency of occurence.
- Histogram
- A sequence of program statements that can never be executed
- Infeasible Path
- Materials, services, or information needed from suppliers to make a process work or build a product.
- Inputs
- Formal assessment of a work product conducted by one or more qualified independent reviewers to detect defects.
- Inspection
- The insertion of additional code into a program to collect information about program behavior during program execution
- Instrumentation
- Testing conducted by the development team with two or more programs or application components have been successfully unit tested.
- Integration Testing
- The process of verifying the consistency, completeness and correctness of software at each stage of the development lifecycle
- Life Cycle Testing.
- Value derived by adding several quanitities and dividing the sum by the number of these quanitities
- Mean (aka Average)
- Verifies that early models can handle the various types of events found in production data by running actual production transactions through the models.
- Model Animation
- Customer-oriented statement of purpose for a unit or a team
- Mission
- Method to determine test set thoroughness by measuring the extent to which a test set can discriminate the program from slight variants of it.
- Mutation Analysis
- Tool used to assist in detecting and diagnosing network problems.
- Network-Analyzers
- Products, services or information supplied to meet customer needs.
- Outputs
- Test method satisfying the coverge criteria that each logical path through the program be tested.
- Path Testing
- Validates taht both the online response time and batch run times meet the defined performance requirements
- Performance Test
- Method of control put in place within each stage of the SDLC to promote error identification and resolution so that defects are not propageted downstream to subsequent stages of the SDLC.
- Phase Containment
- Managerial desires and intents concerning either process or products.
- Policy
- Analyzes production data to identify, independent from the specifications, the types and frequency of data that the system will have to process/produce.
- Population Analysis
- Step-by-step method followed to ensure that standards are met.
- Procedure
- The cost of producing a product. Consist of actual production plus the Cost of Quality.
- Production Costs
- The set of support activities needed to provide adequate confidence that processes are established and continuously improved to produce products that meet specifications and are fit for use.
- Quality Assurance
- The process by which product quality is compared with applicable standards and the action taken when nonconformance is detected.
- Quality Control
- Systematic matrix method used to translate customer wants or needs into product or service characteristics that will have a significant posibie impact on meeting customer demands.
- Quality Function Deployment
- Evaluates the contingency features built into the application for handling interruptions and for returning to specific points in the application processing cycle including checkpoints, backups, restores, and restarts.
- Recovery Test
- Testing of previously verified program or application following program modification for extension or correct to ensure no new defects have been introduced.
- Regression Testing
- Shows the controls within application systems used to reduce the identified risk, and in what segement of the application those risks exist. One dimension is risk, second is the application system and the intersection are the controls.
- Risk Matrix
- Graph of data points in chronological order used to illustrate trends or cycles of the characteristic being measured to suggest an assignable cause rather than random variation.
- Run Chart
- Graph designed to show whether there is a relationship b/w two changing variables.
- Scatter Plot Diagram
- Test Method that executes each statement in a program at least once during program testing.
- Statement Testing
- Analysis of a program that is performed without executing the program. It maybe applied to the requirements, design or code.
- Static Analysis
- The test subjects a system to varying environmental conditions that defy normal expectations. High transaction volume, large database size or restart/recovery circumstances.
- Stress Testing.
- Testing method in which the test data is derived solely from the program structure.
- Structural Testing
- Special code segments that when invoked by a code segment under testing, simulate the behavior of designed and specified modules not yet considered.
- Stub
- Entire system is tested to verify that all functional, information ,structurla and quality requirements have been met. Verifies the system in addition to all external interfaces, manual procedures, restart and recovery and human -conputer interfaces.
- System Test
- Software tool that creates test cases from requirements specifications. Cases generated this way ensure taht 100% of the functionality specified is tested.
- Test Case Generator
- A set of one or more test cases
- Test
- An individual test condition, executed as part of a larger test that contributes to the test's objectives.
- Test Case Specification
- Test cases are grouped into manageable unites.
- Test cycles.
- Software package that creates test transactions for testing application systems and programs.
- Test Data Generator
- Document that specifies the details of the test approach for a software feature or a combination of features and identifies the associated tests.
- Test Design Specification
- Document describing any event during the testing process that requires investigation
- Test Incidental Report
- Document describing the intended scope, approach, resources and schedule of testing activities.
- Test Plan
- Tool that specifies an order of actions that should be erformed during a test session.
- Test Script
- Tool that allows testers to organize test scripts by function or other grouping
- Test Suite Manager
- Testing individual programs, modules or componnts to demonstrate taht the work package executes per specification, and validate the design and technical quality of the application.
- Unit Test
- To review the application user interface and other human factors of the application with the people who wil be using the application.
- Usability Test
- Testing conducted to ensure that the system meets the needs of the organization and the end user/customer. Test validatest that the right system was built.
- User Acceptance Test
- Determination of the correctness of the final program or software produced from a development project with respect to the user needs and requirements.
- Validation
- Act of reviewing, inspecting, testing, checking, auditing or otherwise establishing and documenting whether items, processes, services or documents conform to specified requirements.
- Verification
- Statement that describes the desired future state of a unit.
- Vision
- Testing techniuqe that assumes that the path of the logic in a program unit or component is known.
- White box Testing.