Email Memo: Progress Report

Memorandum

To: Dr. Erika Paterson, Professor
From: Matthew De Rose, Student
Date: July 10th, 2020
Subject: Progress Report for Formal Report

As per the assignment 2.3 description, this memo contains a progress report for the research that will be conducted for my formal report titled “Feasibility Analysis of Introducing Unit Testing into the DAB Software Development Team’s Testing Protocol”.

Target Audience 

The manager of the DAB Team, Tom Smith, will be the intended audience for the report.

Research Purpose

The purpose of the formal report is to provide Tom Smith with information regarding the feasibility of integrating unit testing into the existing software testing protocol for the DAB Software development team.

Research Significance

Tom has been whether integrating unit testing into the existing testing protocol is a possible solution to add confidence in our automated testing suite through the provision of more information about what specific elements in a software system are working and failing with each update/addition of new code. By conducting this feasibility analysis, Tom will be provided information about the options of unit testing availability, the effort involved to add unit testing into our existing protocol and the team’s attitude to integrating unit testing.

Research Plan

Problem

• Currently the DAB software development team only uses api and end-to-end automated testing to validate functionality and user workflow respectively for the product . The team is unable to validate the smaller elements (e.g. classes, services, user interface components) that make up the large system automatically and must rely on time-consuming manual debugging to resolve issues on a smaller scale.

Primary Data Sources

• An interview with the Quality Assurance Analyst on the team responsible for maintaining, monitoring and developing the tests to discuss:
  1. The team’s initial reasoning for choosing only API and end-to-end testing to make up the teams automated testing protocol at the start of the DAB development
  2. The team’s initial reasoning for not including unit testing in the automated testing protocol at the start of the DAB development
  3. Discuss possible unit testing strategies that could be implemented in our front end (user interface of the software) and back end (data management and services)
• An anonymous online survey provided to each member of the development team to determine :
  1. Each developers previous experience with implementing unit testing in an automated test suite (if any)
  2. Estimated effort range for adding unit tests with each feature that is created or bug that is fixed
  3. Willingness to integrate the different unit testing strategies discussed in the meeting with the team’s Quality Assurance Analyst (if at all)

Note: The survey currently does not have the unit testing strategies included since these will be ascertained after the interview with the Quality Assurance Analyst but contains the generic questions that will be asked regarding these strategies

Secondary Research Plan

• General strategies for implementing automated unit testing into enterprise software in the front and back end of the software
• Possible technologies that can be used for automated unit testing (i.e. programming tools, code libraries)
  • Possible costs of using different technologies
  • Possible effort required to conduct initial setup of the technology in our existing software
• Basic statistical analysis of the results of the survey will be required interpret the data collected from the survey
  • The results produced from the statistical analysis will be graphical represented in appropriate graphs, plots or tables

Schedule

• Quality Assurance Analyst interview – completed by July 17th
• Follow-up secondary research regarding possible unit testing strategies – completed by July 20th
• Anonymous Survey provided to the team – completed by July 24th
• Secondary research to interpret data – completed by July 27th
• Report drafting – completed by August 1st

If you would please let me know at your earliest convenience if you feel this plan is sufficient to create an adequate formal report, it would be greatly appreciated.

Survey Questions URL: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OyzRYZXBhb-cQDK_Lux8Np8Ex5zJyAY92JOhdcfdM50/edit