Theoretical Study of the Personal Capability Improvement in Unit Test

Unit test is major part of the software quality assurance. The unit test quality directly affects the software quality. The software enterprise takes more and more attention on unit test. However, beside the mature technical, tools and process of unit test, the effect of unit test is not very good. Base on an overall analysis of the unit test work, the paper indicates that people is the kernel and ties of the test jobs. The key point to improve the unit test level is the improvement of the personal capability of test personnel. The paper introduces the concepts of capability and personal capability in unit test. The three characters of personal capability for unit test are test efficiency, test quality and forecast. Personal capability is reflected and developed by specific activities and practices. Three key practices for capability improvements are plan practice, track practice and evaluate and improve practice. The paper introduces three key practices in detail. An enterprise case is studied and the result shows that the experience of personal capability improvement process will provide foundation for next turn of improvement activities, and act as reference to the software enterprise that want to improve their unit test process