Answer Q Example

Answer Q Example Answer Q â€" Essay Example > QUESTION ONE You have just been appointed as manager to a small software house, which has expanded considerably over the last two years and now employs 30 staff. The majority of the work is to develop dedicated systems for SMEs. Currently, the testing does not involve automated tools. You have decided to consider the introduction of an automated testing tool. (a) Discuss, with justification the potential problems and disadvantages of introducing such a tool, considering its effect on your staff, management and clients. (10 marks) Automated testing involves the automation of the manual testing process that is being used currently. This means that there has to be a manual testing process that is present within the firm or company. Automation mostly will involve the use of certain tools and strategies that are aimed at reducing the need for manual human involvement within the unskilled tasks that are in most cases repetitive and redundant. Automated testing unfortunately has a few di sadvantages to the staff, the management and even the clients, despite its many advantages and benefits. The first problem is that the writing of the automation test scripts requires much proficiency and this is one major problem that the management will have to face and thus it is a disadvantage. The debugging of the test script may be a potential problem. If an error presents itself in the test script, it might lead to consequences that may be deadly. The maintenance of the test may prove to be costly mostly in the case of playback methods. Even if there is a minor change that may occur in the GUI, there needs to rerecording of the test script or even the replacement of the test script by a new one. This may present a disadvantage to the staff who will have to do extra work of redoing this task of rerecording the test scripts. Test data files maintenance may be difficult especially in the case that test scripts are used in the testing of more screens. It is finally important to note that the human touch can never be duplicated and this will mean that the clients will not receive the service that they were used to that was personalized with that human touch. (b) Using the four steps of the Deming Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle as a framework, discuss, with justification, how you would undertake each of the four steps to identify a suitable automated testing tool. i) The Plan step(16 marks)The plan step involves finding out what is wrong first so as to improve the operations. This means that any potential problems to be faced have to be identified and ideas found with the relevant solutions to be formulated. Thus I would start by planning for changes that are aimed at bringing improvement. I would also perform a customer mapping as well as a supplier mapping. I would also put flow charting into use to aid in the identification. I would also conduct a Pareto analysis. Brainstorming with the rest of the staff and management would also be very important in the ident ification process. I would also make use of the nominal group technique. The use of a solution or fault tree could also prove to be useful in the identification of a suitable automated testing tool. I would also make use of the evaluation matrix. Finally, cause and effect diagrams could really come in handy in the identification process.