Incorporating Metrics in an Organizational Test Strategy

An organizational level test strategy needs to incorporate metrics to make the testing activities visible and available to process improvements. The majority of testing measurements that are done are based on faults found in the test execution phase. In contrast, this paper investigates metrics to support software test planning and test design processes. We have assembled metrics in these two process types to support management in carrying out evidence-based test process improvements and to incorporate suitable metrics as part of an organization level test strategy. The study is composed of two steps. The first step creates a relevant context by analyzing key phases in the software testing lifecycle, while the second step identifies the attributes of software test planning and test design processes along with metric(s) support for each of the identified attributes.