Integrating Testing and Implementation into Development
Maaret Pyhäjärvi, Kristian Rautiainen · Engineering Management Journal · 2004
:Cost of defects increases significantly the later the defects are found. Testing is the means to find defects, and we view testing in the broader perspective of maximizing customer satisfaction and providing feedback for process refinement, in addition to just detecting and getting defects corrected in the software. Testing is an integral activity in software development. Testing should be included early in the software development, but achieving this right-from-the-beginning integration of testing and implementation into efficient development has proven a challenge in practice. This article presents problems with use of the V-model as a reference model for this integration. We identify differences in testing in plan-driven and agile development approaches, and explain how to use a general framework for managing software product development, Cycles of Control, to structure the links between implementation and development and to use software development project dynamics for the benefit of the project.