You work for an international company producing hardware and software for telecom networks. Hardware and software development are carried out in separate business units. You are the test manager of one product line of network router software.

In your product line, there is a long tradition of creating tightly integrated products using an incremental product lifecycle. The hardware business unit produces a new version every six months. Your software product line aims to have a new version of the software ready for each new hardware version. The software is developed in two-month increments. The business unit schedules are synchronized during design.

Your team consists of 15 testers, who have been in the company for at least two years, but mostly a lot longer. New tests are developed by the most experienced test analysts. Variations of tests and the regression test sets are run by the rest of the team.

The company’s management requires monthly progress reports listing the number of severe defects found, as well as the status of test execution. There have also been efforts to measure the efficiency of personnel in all business units. There have been problems keeping up with the hardware development schedule.

You have heard that another similar software product line within your company is using an opensource tool for their test automation. They use it to automate roughly 50% of the tests and execute the remaining tests manually through the user interface of the software.

You are requested to investigate if it would be possible to use this tool for your product line as well.

What should be your key concern?

Select ONE option.

You are working on a software development project that is using an Agile development methodology.

You are considering introducing a test automation tool to improve the quality and efficiency of testing. You have identified three potential tools: Tool A, Tool B, and Tool C. Each tool has different features, costs, and benefits. The annual recurring costs for all three tools are equal to 20% of the acquisition costs. Before the implementation of the tool the annual manual testing effort was $ 60.000. You have performed a cost-benefit analysis and calculated the ROI for each tool based on the following information:

• Tool A costs $10,000 to purchase and $2,000 per year to maintain. It has a high level of usability and maintainability, but it only supports functional testing. It can reduce the manual testing effort by 20% and the test cycle time by 10%. It can also increase the test coverage by 15%.
• Tool B costs $15,000 to purchase and $3,000 per year to maintain. It has a moderate level of usability and maintainability, but it supports both functional and performance testing. It can reduce the manual testing effort by 30% and the test cycle time by 20%. It can also increase the test coverage by 25%.
• Tool C costs $20,000 to purchase and $4,000 per year to maintain. It has a low level of usability and maintainability, but it supports functional, performance, and security testing. It can reduce the manual testing effort by 40% and the test cycle time by 30%. It can also increase the test coverage by 35%.

Assuming that the ROI can be calculated for the given situation, which tool would you choose and why?

Select ONE option.