Generating test cases from UML activity diagrams using the Condition-Classification Tree Method

A key technical challenge in software testing is the design of useful test cases. Test design can be based on a variety of software artifacts, including requirements, designs, or even the implementation. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is now widely used to describe object-oriented designs. This paper focuses on one UML diagram, the activity diagram, which is used to model software behavior. This paper proposes the Condition-Classification Tree Method for generating test cases from activity diagrams. Activity diagrams are used to generate condition-classification trees, which are then used to create test case tables and test cases. The paper presents experimental data that show the proposed method can help generate a relatively small number of test cases at reasonable cost, early in development.