Activity: Analyze Test Failure

Examine the Test Logs

Start by gathering the Test Logs output during the implementation and execution of the tests. Relevant logs might come from many sources-they might be captured by the tools you use (both test execution and diagnostic tools), generated by custom-written routines your team has developed, output from the Target Test Items themselves, and recorded manually be the tester. Gather all of the available Test Log sources and examine their content. Check that all the scheduled testing executed to completion, and that all the tests were scheduled that should have been.

Capture Nontrivial Incident Data

It's important to capture any anomalous occurrences-even if you can't reproduce or explain them now, subsequent incidents with similar symptoms will eventually provide enough information to help isolate what the fault is behind them.

Log as much detail as you can now but indicate that the incident can't yet be resolved.

Identify Procedural Errors in the Test

It's pretty common that a number of failures will be as a result of errors introduced during the implementation of the test, or in the management of the test environment. Identify and correct these errors.

If the test has completed abnormally, preventing other tests from being executed, you might need to recover the test close to the point of failure and continue execution of the remaining tests.

Locate and Isolate Failures

The more diagnosis of the failure you perform, the more likelihood there will be that the fault will eventually be identified and understood.

Try to isolate the failure by eliminating Target Test Items that are unlikely to be involved in the failure, and look for trends and characteristics in the remaining items, system status etc.

Conduct an analysis of the failure by reproducing it under controlled conditions, if the failure cannot be investigated usefully without reproduction. Use diagnostic and debugging tools where helpful.

Diagnose Failure Symptoms and Characteristics

Attempt to diagnose the underlying fault using your experience of similar incidents that have occurred.

If required and available, enlist assistance form developers, taking advantage of the developers' internal knowledge of the software to improve the failure analysis.

Identify Candidate Solutions

See Activity: Determine Test Results - Create and maintain Change Requests for information on writing effective incident reports and Change Requests.

Document Your Findings Appropriately

See Activity: Determine Test Results - Create and maintain Change Requests for information on writing effective incident reports and Change Requests.

Evaluate and Verify Your Results

Now that you have completed the work, it is beneficial to verify that the work was of sufficient value, and that you did not simply consume vast quantities of paper. You should evaluate whether your work is of appropriate quality, and that it is complete enough to be useful to those team members who will make subsequent use of it as input to their work. Where possible, use the checklists provided in RUP to verify that quality and completeness are "good enough".

Have the people performing the downstream activities that rely on your work as input take part in reviewing your interim work. Do this while you still have time available to take action to address their concerns. You should also evaluate your work against the key input artifacts to make sure you have represented them accurately and sufficiently. It might be useful to have the author of the input artifact review your work on this basis.

Try to remember that that RUP is an iterative process and that in many cases artifacts evolve over time. As such, it is not usually necessary-and is often counterproductive-to fully-form an artifact that will only be partially used or will not be used at all in immediately subsequent work. This is because there is a high probability that the situation surrounding the artifact will change-and the assumptions made when the artifact was created proven incorrect-before the artifact is used, resulting in wasted effort and costly rework. Also avoid the trap of spending too many cycles on presentation to the detriment of content value. In project environments where presentation has importance and economic value as a project deliverable, you might want to consider using an administrative resource to perform presentation tasks.

Rational Unified Process