Sample Timeline: Application Enhancement Project

Include testing resources as part of discovery project discussion

Business Analyst works with product owner to document system requirements

System requirements definition:

• System requirements that are captured as acceptance criteria can be used as test cases for functional testing 

Project Manager creates project plan.

Include test planning as part of the project plan:

• Meet with Release Engineering team manager to consider testing needs for the project
• Decision regarding manual function testing vs. automated function testing. 

Unit function tests for application: Created by developer and/or executed manually by developer and/or BA.

Unit function tests for APIs. Created by developer. Consult with Release Engineering as needed. 

API Performance testing: Validate API performance in isolation from application.

Security testing: For Java applications, developer integrates Veracode into IDE in order to verify code does not have security vulnerabilities. Application enhancements can provide an opportunity to mitigate security vulnerabilities at a time when regression testing resources are available.

Continuous Integration: Utilize Travis to execute unit tests automatically for each application build.

One application feature complete

API Unit tests: Release Engineering validates API unit tests

Systems Integration: Validate integration of application with APIs and other backend services 

Automated or manual function tests: If automated function tests are included for this project, begin coding automated function tests for test cases that have been validated by the product owner.

Application available in Test environment

Performance Testing:

• BA or product owner determines test cases and expected response times
• Test environment scaled similarly to production in order to deliver valid test results
• Load testing: Validate that average response times are consistent with product owner expectations.

Systems Integration Testing (SIT):

• Validate integration of application unit tests, API unit tests and other backend services

Manual Function Testing:

• Validate that UI behaves as expected, based on a set of specified test cases.

Automated Function Testing:

• Validate that UI behaves as expected, based on a set of specified test cases.
  
• BA validates automated regression tests and documents edge cases that will need manual testing.

Automated Function Testing (Regression Testing):

• Automated regression tests are available to be run for all application builds, to ensure that code changes do not break existing application functionality.

Performance Testing:

• Available to be re-run against Test environment as needed.