Istqb F.l. Glossary Chapters 5 & 6

Front 1

A skilled professional who is involved in the testing of a component or system.

Back 1

Tester

Front 2

The person responsible for project management of testing activities and resources, and evaluation of a test object. The individual who directs, controls, administers, plans and regulates the evaluation of a test object.

Back 2

Test manager (test leader)

Front 3

A document describing the scope, approach, resources and schedule of intended test activities. It identifies amongst others test items, the features to be tested, the testing tasks, who will do each task, degree of tester independence, the test environment, the test design techniques and entry and exit criteria to be used, and the rationale for their choice, and any risks requiring contingency planning.

Back 3

Test plan

Front 4

A group of test activities that are organized and managed together.

Back 4

Test level

Front 5

The set of generic and specific conditions for permitting a process to go forward with a defined task, e.g. test phase.

Back 5

Entry criteria

Front 6

The set of generic and specific conditions, agreed upon with the stakeholders, for permitting a process to be officially completed.

Back 6

Exit criteria

Front 7

A high-level description of the test levels to be performed and the testing within those levels for an organization or program (one or more projects).

Back 7

Test strategy

Front 8

The implementation of the test strategy for a specific project. It typically includes the decisions made that follow based on the (test) project’s goal and the risk assessment carried out, starting points regarding the test process, the test design techniques to be applied, exit criteria and test types to be performed.

Back 8

Test approach

Front 9

A test management task that deals with the activities related to periodically checking the status of a test project. Reports are prepared that compare the actuals to that which was planned.

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Test monitoring

Front 10

The planning, estimating, monitoring and control of test activities.

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Test management

Front 11

The ratio of the number of failures of a given category to a given unit of measure, e.g. failures per unit of time, failures per number of transactions, failures per number of computer runs.

Back 11

Failure rate

Front 12

The number of defects identified in a component or system divided by the size of the component or system (expressed in standard measurement terms, e.g. lines of code, number of classes or function points).

Back 12

Defect density

Front 13

A document summarizing testing activities and results. It also contains an evaluation of the corresponding test items against exit criteria.

Back 13

Test summary report (test report)

Front 14

A test management task that deals with developing and applying a set of corrective actions to get a test project on track when monitoring shows a deviation from what was planned.

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Test control

Front 15

A discipline applying technical and administrative direction and surveillance to: identify and document the functional and physical characteristics of a configuration item, control changes to those characteristics, record and report change processing and implementation status, and verify compliance with specified requirements.

Back 15

Configuration management

Front 16

An element of configuration management, consisting of the evaluation, co-ordination, approval or disapproval, and implementation of changes to configuration items after formal establishment of their configuration identification.

Back 16

Configuration control (version control)

Front 17

A factor that could result in future negative consequences; usually expressed as impact and likelihood.

Back 17

Risk

Front 18

A risk directly related to the test object.

Back 18

Product risk

Front 19

An approach to testing to reduce the level of product risks and inform stakeholders on their status, starting in the initial stages of a project. It involves the identification of product risks and their use in guiding the test process.

Back 19

Risk-based testing

Front 20

A risk related to management and control of the (test) project, e.g. lack of staffing, strict deadlines, changing requirements, etc.

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Project risk

Front 21

A source of a defect such that if it is removed, the occurance of the defect type is decreased or removed.

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Root cause

Front 22

Recording the details of any incident that occurred, e.g. during testing.

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Incident logging

Front 23

A document reporting on any event that occurred, e.g. during the testing, which requires investigation.

Back 23

Incident report

Front 24

A document reporting on any flaw in a component or system that can cause the component or system to fail to perform its required function.

Back 24

Defect report (bug report)

Front 25

The number of defects found by a test phase, divided by the number found by that test phase and any other means afterwards.

Back 25

Defect detection percentage (DDP)

Front 26

The level of (business) importance assigned to an item, e.g. defect.

Back 26

Priority

Front 27

The degree of impact that a defect has on the development or operation of a component or system.

Back 27

Severity

Front 28

The effect on the component or system by the measurement instrument when the component or system is being measured, e.g. by a performance testing tool or monitor. For example performance may be slightly worse when performance testing tools are being used.

Back 28

Probe effect

Front 29

A tool that provides support to the test management and control part of a test process. It often has several capabilities, such as testware management, scheduling of tests, the logging of results, progress tracking, incident management and test reporting.

Back 29

Test management tool

Front 30

A tool that supports the recording of requirements, requirements attributes (e.g. priority, knowledge responsible) and annotation, and facilitates traceability through layers of requirements and requirements change management.

Back 30

Requirements management tool

Front 31

A tool that facilitates the recording and status tracking of incidents. They often have workflow-oriented facilities to track and control the allocation, correction and re-testing of incidents and provide reporting facilities.

Back 31

Incident management tool (defect management tool)

Front 32

A tool that provides support for the identification and control of configuration items, their status over changes and versions, and the release of baselines consisting of configuration items.

Back 32

Configuration management tool

Front 33

A tool that provides support to the review process. Typical features include review planning and tracking support, communication support, collaborative reviews and a repository for collecting and reporting of metrics.

Back 33

Review tool

Front 34

Analysis of software artifacts, e.g. requirements or code, carried out without execution of these software development artifacts.

Back 34

Static analysis

Front 35

A tool that carries out static analysis.

Back 35

Static analysis tool (static analyzer)

Front 36

Analysis of source code carried out without execution of that software.

Back 36

Static code analysis

Front 37

A tool that carries out static code analysis. The tool checks source code, for certain properties such as conformance to coding standards, quality metrics or data flow anomalies.

Back 37

Static code analyzer

Front 38

A tool that supports the creation, amendment and verification of models of the software or system.

Back 38

Modeling tool

Front 39

A tool that supports the test design activity by generating test inputs from a specification that may be held in a CASE tool repository, e.g. requirements management tool, from specified test conditions held in the tool itself, or from code.

Back 39

Test design tool

Front 40

A type of test tool that enables data to be selected from existing databases or created, generated, manipulated and edited for use in testing.

Back 40

Test data preparation tool

Front 41

A type of test tool that is able to execute other software using an automated test script, e.g. capture/playback.

Back 41

Test execution tool

Front 42

A type of test execution tool where inputs are recorded during manual testing in order to generate automated test scripts that can be executed later (i.e. replayed). These tools are often used to support automated regression testing.

Back 42

Capture/playback tool

Front 43

A test environment comprised of stubs and drivers needed to execute a test.

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Test harness

Front 44

A tool that provides an environment for unit or component testing in which a component can be tested in isolation or with suitable stubs and drivers. It also provides other support for the developer, such as debugging capabilities.

Back 44

Unit test framework tool

Front 45

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.

Back 45

Stub

Front 46

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.

Back 46

Driver

Front 47

A test tool to perform automated test comparison of actual results with expected results.

Back 47

Test comparator

Front 48

The process of identifying differences between the actual results produced by the component or system under test and the expected results for a test.

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Test comparison

Front 49

A tool that provides objective measures of what structural elements, e.g. statements, branches have been exercised by a test suite.

Back 49

Coverage tool

Front 50

Attributes of software products that bear on its ability to prevent unauthorized access, whether accidental or deliberate, to programs and data.

Back 50

Security

Front 51

A tool that supports operational security.

Back 51

Security tool

Front 52

Testing to determine the security of the software product.

Back 52

Security testing

Front 53

A tool that provides support for testing security characteristics and vulnerabilities.

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Security testing tool

Front 54

A tool that provides run-time information on the state of the software code. These tools are most commonly used to identify unassigned pointers, check pointer arithmetic and to monitor the allocation, use and de-allocation of memory and to flag memory leaks.

Back 54

Dynamic analysis tool

Front 55

A tool that usually has two main facilities: load generation and test transaction measurement. Load generation can simulate either multiple users or high volumes of input data. During execution, response time measurements are taken from selected transactions and these are logged.

Back 55

Performance-testing tool (load-testing tool)

Front 56

A type of performance testing conducted to evaluate the behavior of a component or system with increasing ____.

Back 56

Load testing

Front 57

Testing where the system is subjected to large _______ of data.

Back 57

Volume testing

Front 58

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

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Stress testing

Front 59

A software tool or hardware device that runs concurrently with the component or system under test and supervises, records and/or analyses the behavior of the component or system.

Back 59

Monitor (monitoring tool)

Front 60

The process of finding, analyzing and removing the causes of failures in software.

Back 60

Debugging

Front 61

A tool used by programmers to reproduce failures, investigate the state of programs and find the corresponding defect.

Back 61

Debugging tool

Front 62

A programming language in which executable test _______ are written, used by a test execution tool (e.g. a capture/playback tool).

Back 62

Scripting language

Front 63

A scripting technique that stores test input and expected results in a table or spreadsheet, so that a single control script can execute all of the tests in the table.

Back 63

Data-driven testing

Front 64

A scripting technique that uses data files to contain not only test data and expected results, but also ________ related to the application being tested.

Back 64

Keyword-driven testing.