Guideline: Tips - Set Up And Maintain Infrastructure (AST)

Example

An organisation’s infrastructure is maintained by an external party, with the condition that a daily backup of the infrastructure is made. For this purpose, an automated process is created that makes a backup at night, somewhere between the hours of 22:00 and 06:00, depending on other processes.

The building and testing of a new web application overruns and it is decided to extend the time spent on testing per day. This means that the testers plan to test (in shifts) from 06:00 to 01:00 hours. It is therefore necessary to change the times of the backup process. A request is submitted, but the external organisation is reluctant to grant it. Many other processes will have to be changed, and that could take up to two weeks. The option of not making a backup of the test environment is out of the question for all kinds of legal reasons. Meanwhile, pressure is being put on the test manager to find a solution for the problem of the overrun.

Workplaces

Certain test types can deliver a great deal of data. An example of this is the performance test, in which a test tool is used. The output of this test tool may consist of thousands of lines of information. Stored in files, this may well grow to several gigabytes per test, often with printouts of over a hundred pages. It is therefore a good idea to adopt separate measures for dealing with this. For example, extra disk space could be reserved and an extra printer connected.

Intake of infrastructure

When test tools are used for automating the test execution the operational infrastructure must be in place before the Specification phase starts. This means activity “Intake of the infrastructure” is completed before the Specification phase starts. This is because in the Specification phase the automated test scripts are programmed and therefore you need an operational workplace, an operational test tool and an operational test environment.