Zephyr as applied to V-Model
Last Updated on Monday, 12 September 2011 20:13 Written by Ivo Verlaek Monday, 12 September 2011 20:02
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See also: Agile, Waterfall, V-Model, Hybrid Model
Zephyr with its flexible design, easily fits and enhances any test methodology that you might be using as part of your software development lifecycle: Waterfall, Agile, V-Model or a Hybrid.
Zephyr is organized into multiple, logical areas - Department, Projects, Releases/Iterations and has applications in each area that allow for the rigidity of a process flow while keeping the overall model flexible to accommodate changes. This approach leads to effective management of every aspect of your testing department, while giving enhanced productivity and efficiency gains to all members of the department in their day-to-day activities.
The V-Model approach to software development has the following salient aspects to it:
- It boasts a structured, well documented and disciplined process
- The process is rigorous and measurable
- It is predictive and largely used for complex projects
For its part, Testing has its own stage within this process and benefits largely from the above. Using Zephyr as a Test Management System in such an environment is very beneficial and the above diagram shows the correlation between the various stages and the appropriate applications within Zephyr.
How Zephyr integrates with this process
For departments employing the V-Model, Zephyr is set up to have multiple releases within each project. For each release, during the Requirements Analysis Stage requirements documents are created by the Business and these are linked or uploaded within the Documents application. During the System Design Stage, the Test Case Repository is used to plan and track major/minor requirements as well as address all aspects of a Test Plan including the various phases of testing (Acceptance, Functionality, Regression, Integration etc.). Based on the requirements and the design documentation/POCs available during the Architecture Design and Module Design Stages, detailed test cases are created by various testers assigned to this release and a review process set up.
Once the test cases have been authored and reviewed and the software is ready to exit the Development Stage and into Unit Testing, a detailed Test Execution schedule is created and appropriate assignments to different testers done. Now, test case execution begins in earnest and the test-file-fix-retest loop is put in place with the Testcase Execution and Defect Tracking applications. Various test cycles are created within Zephyr to align with Integration Testing, System Testing and final Acceptance Testing Stages.
Zephyr tracks everything automatically and produces live metrics on all key Stages of the testing cycle, constantly measuring productivity and quality of the software under test by reporting on test case creation, coverage, test execution progress and defects.
