Benefits of Test Data Creation and Test Data Design

- Reduce the cost and effort to resolve and reduces the amount of scrap and rework on the project.
- No matter how many testers you have, they all are going to come back with the same test case.
- Provides better wording of the test descriptions than wording in original specifications.
- Allows the test cases to be reviewed by the users/domain experts to validate the system or application rules and find defects in specifications by
reviewing the test cases.
- Moves a major step of user acceptance earlier in the process before the code is written.
- Address defects that might be hidden because they are not directly observable.
- Increases code coverage, and decreases the likelihood of hidden errors canceling each other out.
- Allows companies to achieve major savings in the effort to script/implement test cases as well as reducing the time to run test cases,
validate test cases, and maintain the test library.
- With one fourth the tests for equivalent coverage, this results in over a ten X reduction in the cost and effort to build executable scripts.
- Ensures that code coverage is 2 to 3 times better at delivery of the application. Most organizations only achieve 30% to 35%. For
organizations that must meet test coverage criteria set by various government agencies (e.g. FAA, FDA, DOD).
- Helps ensure the system maintains data and transaction integrity even under adverse conditions.
- Avoids confusion in exactly how to set-up the test and what the results should be. Those not using RBT to design tests often use subtly or even
significantly different wording to describe the same condition.
- Forces the tester to ask questions of how individual functions work and how those functions should work in relation to other functions.
- Numerous defects are detected which are not normally found until system integration testing.
- Configuration test design
- Ensures elimination of impossible test combinations while still supporting full negative testing.
- Protects the investment in the existing test cases.

- Provides management with quantitative measure of the quality of the application. Go / no go decisions are made on a quantitative basis function by function.
- Allows testers to decide which test to implement first.
- Optimizes test coverage when time is limited.

- Saves redundant data entry because it is described once in RBT and that description is replicated across all the RBT test cases.
- Exported into Mercury Interactive’s Test Director, saving an enormous amount of redundant entry.
- Reduce rework time by ensuring immediate notification of requirement changes, keeping all stakeholders up to date on the project.
- Create self-documenting tests which saves scripting time.
- Allows easy integration with non-standard tools
- Allows flexible integration of test information in other documents

- Saves testers time.
- Produces test definition matrix and test coverage matrix with one mouse click instead of hours spent building an Excel spreadsheet.
- Ensures that the tests are in the format most useful to needs of the project.
- Switching between formats only requires one mouse click. This is especially useful when doing projects for the federal government since they require formats necessitating a lot of work to create and maintain.

- Analyzes how much the existing set of test cases cover the rules of a new or revised function.
- Identifies what additional test cases are now needed, what modifications need to be done to existing test cases, and which test cases are now redundant.
- Allows testers to maintain an optimal test library while minimizing rework of tests already built.
- Ability to prioritize the testing effort
By focusing on the tests which give the greatest coverage first, a reasonably stable version of a given component can be created for use in early entry into system level integration test.
- Assist when projects find tight time or resource constraints limit how many tests can be implemented and run.

- Identifies impacted tests when a specification changes.
- The test cases are often more detailed and easier to read than the original specifications. Users use this view to ensure that what is being built matches their expectations.
- Provides mechanism to move user acceptance testing earlier in the life cycle long before code has been written.
- User do not have to be familiar with RBT as they are viewing outputs produced by it.
- Ability for users to make informed decisions as to whether the application is ready to deploy.
- Users do not have to be familiar with RBT as they are viewing outputs produced by it.

- Minimize user ramp-up time by providing quick and comprehensive training.
- Ensure that they are correct, complete, unambiguous, and logically consistent.
- It is a useful skill for users and developers in addition to the testing staff.
- Staff can be trained in less than a day to apply this step.
- Uncovers unclear rules for the sequencing of the steps in a system (i.e., unclear precedence relations).
- Uncovers problems with aliases in the naming of data and processes – an
object being referred to by more than one name across different sections in the specifications or two or more different objects being referred to by the same name.
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