Istqb Foundation Level Vocabulary - Chapter 2

Front 1

Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) / Off-The-Shelf Software

Back 1

A software product that is developed for the general market, i.e. for a large number of customers, and that is delivered to many customers in identical format.

Front 2

Iterative Development Model

Back 2

A development lifecycle where a project is broken into a usually large number of iterations. An iteration is a complete development loop resulting in a release (internal or external) of an executable product, a subset of the final product under development, which grows from iteration to iteration to become the final product.

Front 3

Incremental Development Model

Back 3

A development lifecycle where a project is broken into a series of increments, each of which delivers a portion of the functionality in the overall project requirements. The requirements are prioritized and delivered in priority order in the appropriate increment. In some (but not all) versions of this lifecycle model, each subproject follows a ‘mini V-model’ with its own design, coding and testing phases.

Front 4

Validation

Back 4

Confirmation by examination and through provision of objective evidence that the requirements for a specific intended use or application have been fulfilled.

Front 5

Verification

Back 5

Confirmation by examination and through provision of objective evidence that specified requirements have been fulfilled.

Front 6

V-Model

Back 6

A framework to describe the software development lifecycle activities from requirements specification to maintenance. The V-model illustrates how testing activities can be integrated into each phase of the software development lifecycle.

Front 7

Alpha Testing

Back 7

Simulated or actual operational testing by potential users/customers or an independent test team at the developers’ site, but outside the development organization.

Front 8

Beta Testing / Field Testing

Back 8

Operational testing by potential and/or existing users/customers at an external site not otherwise involved with the developers, to determine whether or not a component or system satisfies the user/customer needs and fits within the business processes. Beta testing is often employed as a form of external acceptance testing for off-the-shelf software in order to acquire feedback from the market.

Front 9

Component Testing

Back 9

The testing of individual software components.

Front 10

Driver

Back 10

A software component or test tool that replaces a component that takes care of the control and/or the calling of a component or system.

Front 11

Functional Requirement

Back 11

A requirement that specifies a function that a component or system must perform.

Front 12

Integration

Back 12

The process of combining components or systems into larger assemblies.

Front 13

Integration Testing

Back 13

Testing performed to expose defects in the interfaces and in the interactions between integrated components or systems.

Front 14

Non-Functional Requirement

Back 14

A requirement that does not relate to functionality, but to attributes such as reliability, efficiency, usability, maintainability and portability.

Front 15

Robustness Testing

Back 15

Testing to determine the robustness of the software product.

Front 16

Stub

Back 16

A skeletal or special-purpose implementation of a software component, used to develop or test a component that calls or is otherwise dependent on it. It replaces a called component.

Front 17

System Testing

Back 17

The process of testing an integrated system to verify that it meets specified requirements.

Front 18

Test Environment

Back 18

An environment containing hardware, instrumentation, simulators, software tools, and other support elements needed to conduct a test.

Front 19

Test Level

Back 19

group of test activities that are organized and managed together. A test level is linked to the responsibilities in a project. Examples are component test, integration test, system test and acceptance test.

Front 20

Test-Driven Development

Back 20

A way of developing software where the test cases are developed, and often automated, before the software is developed to run those test cases.

Front 21

User Acceptance Testing / Acceptance Testing / Acceptance

Back 21

Formal testing with respect to user needs, requirements, and business processes conducted to determine whether or not a system satisfies the acceptance criteria and to enable the user, customers or other authorized entity to determine whether or not to accept the system.

Front 22

Black-Box Testing

Back 22

Testing, either functional or non-functional, without reference to the internal structure of the component or system.

Front 23

Code Coverage

Back 23

An analysis method that determines which parts of the software have been executed (covered) by the test suite and which parts have not been executed, e.g. statement coverage, decision coverage or condition coverage.

Front 24

Functional Testing

Back 24

Testing based on an analysis of the specification of the functionality of a component or system.

Front 25

Interoperability Testing

Back 25

The process of testing to determine the interoperability of a software product.

Front 26

Load Testing

Back 26

A type of performance testing conducted to evaluate the behavior of a component or system with increasing load, e.g. numbers of parallel users and/or numbers of transactions, to determine what load can be handled by the component or system.

Front 27

Maintainability Testing

Back 27

The process of testing to determine the maintainability of a software product.

Front 28

Performance Testing

Back 28

The process of testing to determine the performance of a software product.

Front 29

Portability Testing

Back 29

The process of testing to determine the portability of a software product.

Front 30

Reliability Testing

Back 30

The process of testing to determine the reliability of a software product.

Front 31

Security Testing

Back 31

Testing to determine the security of the software product.

Front 32

Stress Testing

Back 32

A type of performance testing conducted to evaluate a system or component at or beyond the limits of its anticipated or specified workloads, or with reduced availability of resources such as access to memory or servers.

Front 33

Usability Testing

Back 33

Testing to determine the extent to which the software product is understood, easy to learn, easy to operate and attractive to the users under specified conditions.

Front 34

White-Box Testing / Structural Testing

Back 34

Testing based on an analysis of the internal structure of the component or system.

Front 35

Impact Analysis

Back 35

The assessment of change to the layers of development documentation, test documentation and components, in order to implement a given change to specified requirements.

Front 36

Maintenance Testing

Back 36

Testing the changes to an operational system or the impact of a changed environment to an operational system.