Chapter 2- Business Intelligence Test Planning – [Estimation , Test Plan, Test Case Design]

Test Planning phase is consisting of – Test Estimation, Test Plan preparation and Test Case design.

Test Estimation

Test Estimation is an ART. Estimations is a variable component of SDLC, however it can be achieved based on experience. A person who estimates the project timelines should be technically sound enough.

Test Estimates are typically required to be produced at 3 stages

1. Ball Park Estimate (BPE) should be produced in the Plan & Analyse phase of the SDLC.
2. High Level Estimate (HLE) should be produced towards the end of High Level Solution Design in the Design phase.
3. Detailed Estimate (DE) should be produced towards the end of Detailed Design in the Build phase

In Data warehouse world the estimations could be differ from each of the components mentioned below :

• Loads from file to staging tables to Integrated Model testing
• Loads from table to staging tables to IM tables testing
• DIMN /FACT projects testing
• Extract projects testing
• Reports testing
• Non-functional tests (T-Pump ,M-Load ,File watcher Catch up logic, Purging loads, Truncate loads

Test Plan :

Test Plan document identifies the risks to the program / project. Test analyst needs to ask as many as questions on the project and detail them as a document is called Test Plan. Please find common questions that you need to ask.

What you are testing? When you are starting and finishing testing? who is doing the testing? any risk? In Scope and Out Scope, who is giving data to you? to whom you are giving your inputs? who all are depend on you ? how you are depend on others? what files/tables/extract you are testing? how you are going to publish your reports? are you maintaining testing data in Quality Center ?

• This is the ‘WHAT’ will be done. The Test Plan deals with the actions that will be taken to mitigate those risks;
• This is the ‘HOW’ and ‘WHO’. The Test Plan may deal with a single test phase or multiple depending on the number of authors and the size/complexity of each phase;

- This will be identified in the Test Strategy. The typical test phases where Organization either author or review Test Plans
are System, Application Acceptance, System Integration, End-to-End and Production Assurance Testing Phases.

Test Case Design

The difference between a Test Condition and a Test Case is that a Test Condition is “what” we need to test and a Test Case is
“how” we will test the Test Condition.

• Test Conditions are the ‘What’ we need to test and are derived from the identified requirements.
• Test Conditions individually identify the individual functional behaviors that make up a requirement (Note: This differs from what is currently done, namely attempting to cover more than one function in the one Test Condition).

For Data warehouse projects we will have below test scenarios

1. Verify the Reconciliation – count between source and target are same after ETL Loads?

2. Verify Inserting a new record into warehouse – a brand new record which is not loaded into warehouse.

3.Verify how the Delta record is processed – Update record to an existing record in warehouse

4.Values that are loaded by ETL Code

5.Values that are loaded by Data Stage jobs

6.Deleting a record (expiring without updating)

Folks will explain each of them above in detail in upcoming blogs. Please provide feed backs to improve my blogs

Many Thanks – Asik