OSS/BSS Testing – the V-Model

On major software projects like the OSS you’re building, testing is an important phase of course. You’ll have undoubtedly incorporated testing into your planning. After all, testing is a key component of any Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). There are various SDLC models / methodologies such as Waterfall, V-Model, Agile and others that you can consider.

Unfortunately, most OSS project teams tend to underestimate the testing phase, thinking it can just fit in around other major activities towards the end of the implementation. Experienced testers will suggest that they should be involved right from the requirement capture phase, because they’ll have to design test cases to prove that each requirement is met.

More importantly, your test strategy and test phase transitioning can play a major part in maintaining momentum through a project’s delivery phase. We’ll look into a number of related details in a series of posts this week.

Today we’ll look at the V-Model. It can be a helpful model for mapping requirements to test phases / cases. The diagram below, which comes from my book, Mastering your OSS, shows a simplified, sample version of the V-Model. It highlights the relationship between key test artefacts (eg plans / designs / specifications / requirements) on the left with the corresponding test phases on the right.

V-Model Testing

Your documentation and test phases will probably differ. You can find a discussion about some other possible OSS test phases here.

We’ll take a closer look tomorrow at how your different test phases could map to the OSS environments you might have available.

If this article was helpful, subscribe to the Passionate About OSS Blog to get each new post sent directly to your inbox. 100% free of charge and free of spam.

Our Solutions

Share:

Most Recent Articles

No telco wants to buy an OSS/BSS

When you’re a senior exec in a telco and you’ve been made responsible for allocating resources, it’s unlikely that you ever think, “gee, we really

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.