Thread Based Integration Testing

 

Introduction

Our organization has recently completed the development of a large-scale command and control system through the implementation and formal qualification phases of the project. This development involved over eighty software engineers developing roughly 1.5 million source lines of code using multiple languages and platforms. In order to deliver the product within the projected schedule, parallel development and rapid integration occurred over many related software functional areas. To facilitate the decomposition of our design into manageable components we chose the concept of a “functional thread” as the elementary building block for integration. In this context, a “functional thread” is defined as a logical execution sequence through a series of interfacing software components resulting from or ending in the receipt of a message, event or operator interaction.

Threads not only serve as the basis for integration, they also tend to drive the entire software development effort from scheduling to status reporting. Each thread itself represents a microcosm of the system in that each has a documented definition and general execution path, an internal design and an associated test. Thread definition intends to communicate functional background and execution details between developers and from developers to testers. More importantly, the desired independence of threads supports incremental integration and system testing while the corresponding thread definition substantiates the results. Finally, since all system development activity progresses in relation to threads, management has an accurate method of judging the status of individual tasks, functional areas and requirements.

Threads

Keeping the goals of iterative development and testing in mind, each thread has its own lifecycle with autonomous states and a formal process for state transitions (see Figure 1). Individual team leaders usually decompose general requirements into groups of threads at the beginning of formal, six month software builds and assign threads to developers. Developers maintain ownership of their threads and are responsible for documenting a scenario under which an integrator can verify the basic functionality, providing rudimentary definition to the thread. Following implementation and unit test, the developer releases the corresponding software components to a daily integration build, at which point the thread enters a “testable” state. After verifying the functionality in the integration build, the developer marks the thread “ready” for an integrator who performs more extensive testing and eventually “integrates” the thread and corresponding software components into the system. At the end of each formal build, a team of key engineers in conjunction with quality assurance checks all threads against requirements as a regression test and “finalizes” those threads which pass.

While the development team originally tracked threads manually, we quickly developed a shared database application to serve as a central repository for thread development, maintenance and tracking. The database provides a formal mechanism for defining and documenting threads, changing thread status and reporting status to project management. Moreover, the database manages references between threads: threads can serve as preconditions to other threads and developers may incorporate thread test steps from previous threads. Most importantly, the interface helps enforce the process by demonstrating the autonomy of thread status and establishing clearly defined responsibilities among developers and testers.

Thread Test Steps

Thread test steps and other background information from the database serve as a contract between developers and integrators. Integrators use thread test steps as a simple scenario to identify the scope of a thread rather than as a rigid test case that may only rubber-stamp a developer’s unit test. Consequently, the integrators are responsible for developing several execution scenarios within the boundaries of the thread and applying appropriate testing mechanisms such as known exceptional cases and boundary checking. Furthermore, the integration team often stresses exercising subsystem interfaces during integration testing, which was an area that thread steps often overlooked.

In addition to helping formalize the implementation process, the thread testing approach standardizes the integration testing process as well. As a result, the number of detected coding errors increased almost 250 percent over three formal builds after thread testing had been introduced. Although errors attributable to integration doubled during the first formal build during which our group used threads, that number has subsequently dropped to almost fifty percent below the level at which we started using threads.

While thread-based development certainly contributes greatly to the main goals of early, rapid integration and iterative development, we have also identified several potential areas of further process improvement. Perhaps most notably, developers and testers shared concerns that thread scope lacked uniformity among subsystems. At times, thread definitions were far too specific and a conscientious integrator could verify the basic functionality in fewer steps than the developer identified. Likewise, developers sometimes defined threads at too high a level, requiring the integrator to seek further information from the developer to ensure a meaningful test. A thread review process, perhaps as part of a design walk through, may answer this problem. Likewise, we recommend requiring completion of a code walk through as a prerequisite to thread completion due to the implications of walk through initiated design and code changes.

Thread Maintenance

A related area of improvement is thread maintenance. While the process encouraged (and the database supported) threads referencing other threads, maintaining consistency was not always an easy task. Furthermore, while software that composes a thread often changes after a thread has been integrated, there is no formal update process for the thread. The changes to process here are obvious and one could modify the tool to help enforce these concerns. For example, the tool would benefit from the ability to attach references to source code units so that changes to code might trigger the need for associated thread changes.

In this project the thread process focused on the integration activities rather than the full development lifecycle. This is certainly the main difference between our thread-based approach and use-case analysis. The thread database requires references to user interface specifications where applicable, but the process did not link the thread directly to the requirements database. Thus software testing and overall system testing were somewhat disjoint in that system testers found it difficult to use the thread database as a reference when creating test cases. Though it might be desirable to shift thread definition to the requirements analysis phases of the project, such analysis usually occurs at a higher level than what we had used for our threads and almost always span subsystem boundaries. Instead we suggest a more hierarchical approach to thread definition rooted in requirement-based parent threads. This would directly link the software thread repository to system requirements and better facilitate a similar iterative approach to system-wide testing. Finally, by linking threads directly to requirements, project management would have better insight about the status of entire requirements.

Since threads drove the software efforts and status, developers viewed threads as the most visible formal process in place. The simplicity of the process, accurate status and integration efficiency contributed to the development team’s acceptance of the process and enthusiasm to suggest improvements. In addition, the empirical results suggest that the introduction of thread-based testing exposed design and coding errors earlier and attributed fewer errors to the integration process itself, probably due to the enhanced communication between developers and testers. In short, our method appears to have synchronized the notion of task completion among developers, testers and management.

Summary

Thread-based integration testing played a key role in the success of this software project. At the lowest level, it provided integrators with better knowledge of the scope of what to test, in effect a contract between developers and testers. At the highest level, it provided a unified status tracking method and facilitated an agreement between management and the developers as to what would be delivered during each formal build. Furthermore, instead of testing software components directly, it required integrators to focus on testing logical execution paths in the context of the entire system. Because of this, it strongly supported the goals of early, rapid integration coupled with an iterative development approach. In summary, the thread approach resulted in tangible executable scenarios driving development and integration while the autonomous, well-defined thread states strengthened the use of threads as an accurate method of scheduling and tracking status.