The cost of the managed and unmanaged incremental integration software testing

Abstract

This paper studies incremental integration testing from the management point of view for software developed through procedural paradigm. It considers the managed, planned and tracked, incremental integration testing. The advantage of the managed way of testing is the fact that testing becomes visible when the managed way is performed. This visibility enables us to see the process of testing in detail and thus contributes to better testing. The aim is to determine the cost of the managed incremental integration testing measured as the actual effort spent on this testing and compare it with the cost of the unmanaged testing. The cost determination has three steps. First, the managed incremental integration testing is completely and precisely defined. Second, this managed incremental integration testing is applied to the development of a number of programs and the data on testing are collected. Third, based upon these data the cost of the managed and unmanaged incremental integration testing are computed and compared. The analysis shows that the cost of the managed incremental integration testing is greater than the cost of the unmanaged testing of approximately 23%. Without this quantitative analysis, the comparison between the managed and unmanaged way of testing can be just qualitative and thus vague.