Iterative Development Testing Approaches

Over the past five years, there has been increasing interest in agile development approaches to software development (such as eXtreme Programming), however, integrating these into a unified testing approach can be challenging given their rapid delivery model.   Applying a testing framework to an agile development approach provides a greater opportunity to ensure a robust and high quality application. This paper reviews a web-services software development project completed at the end of the year 2000 for a large Fortune 500 company. The project used an object-oriented design and blended the more formal Rational Unified Process (RUP) with the low ceremony approached advocated by eXtreme Programming (XP). The application testing approach applied the unit test framework of XP with a formal testing methodology required by the client for this high profile project. The paper describes the process followed and key learnings discovered throughout the project lifecycle.