Finally, we come to the Test Engineering Environment. Often overlooked is the degree to which test code and test strategy become one entity. The Test Strategy, established logically through the design environment, must have real test code that performs the real thinking. The role of a test engineering tool is to provide the following benefits:- Increasing Test Development Productivity
- Reduction of Lifecycle Costs
- Support for Multiple Maintenance Levels
- Avoiding obsolescence
- Re-use of Test Code
Again, the Test engineering environment helps overcome problems such as equipment and code obsolesence, changes to the hardware environments, etc. Although, the test environment can be used to overcome testing changes, it does not address design changes, nor does it maintain any traceability to the design. When used alone, the test engineering environment can actually contribute to loss of information because of its lack of traceability to the design.
By selecting design and test development environments in response to deployment requirements, many problems can be avoided that would otherwise only first be realized when legacy test strategies are updated. It's a classic problem of data re-use, marked by a failure to understand the underlying causes. Rather than repeating history, finding a solution to the underlying engineering failure can pay off long into the future.