MINUTES OF THE

SIGIST STANDARDS WORKING PARTY MEETING

HELD ON 30^th July 2002

1. Present:              Brian Hambling, Graham Thomas, Jane Allerton, Isabel Evans, Stuart Reid.

2. Apologies:        John Kent, Steve Allott.

3. Agree Agenda:

02/7.1                      The agenda was agreed.

4. Minutes from the Previous Meeting:

02/7.2                      The minutes from the previous meeting were agreed.

5. Actions from the Previous Meetings:

01/1.10                    Teams

                                A number of people have joined/left the teams since the last meeting.  The teams as of 11^th September 2002 are:

(It is noted that Team 5 is currently without a Team Leader)

01/10.4                   Circulate Glossary of Terms for Review

                                The Performance Testing Team has produced a glossary of terms relating to their technique. The meeting proposed that all teams produce a glossary of terms as part of the standard. This will be collated by e-mail, posted on the web site for review, with an additional meeting arranged to review the contents.
[22/02/02 Graham Thomas has contacted all Team Leaders and they have given a schedule for the production of a glossary of terms for their technique plus their availability for a glossary of terms review meeting. The consensus for a meeting was not before June 2002.]
[23/04/02 Graham has arranged a Glossary Review meeting for 25^th June 2002.]
[12/06/02 The glossary review meeting has now been rescheduled for 16^th July 02]
[25/06/02 The production of the glossary will be included in the plan for the domain/technique examples scheduled for the 16/07/02 meeting.
[30/07/02] This action is superseded by the plan of action for the glossary.

                                Closed.

NB. Existing team actions will be retained in the minutes as an aide memoir for the teams during the production of the Domain Technique examples. These actions can be closed upon request.

01/12.5                   Interoperability /Compatibility Testing – Technique Updates
The team agreed the following Interoperability actions:

·         to check that the OED definition of communication did not require it to be two way

·         to document how to detail attributes of the interoperability interface

·         to document how to work out appropriate techniques for test case generation

The team agreed to the following Compatibility actions:

·         Investigate the use of State Transition, Boundary Conditions and configuration audits.

·         Investigate the set of compatibility tasks; shared components, events & triggers, operating system time slicing, cause & effect and sequencing of activities e.g. installation.

·         Include cross references to the interoperability and memory management techniques.

[The actions from 02/2.3 have been combined into this action point]
Carried Forward.

02/2.7                      New Joiners Guide
Isabel Evans suggested the production of a guide for new joiners which could be posted on the Web Site. As Secretary Graham has direct contact with all new members so will look at this.
[30/07/02] The new joiners guide will be modified to fit in with the new approach.
Carried Forward.

GT

02/3.3                      Portability Testing - Meeting Actions
- Include an example which covers the porting of code from one environment to another.
- Include in the guidelines the fact that people use the term compatibility to describe the portability testing example documented.
- Include investigative analysis and exploratory testing in the Portability Testing guidelines.
- Update the technique to reflect the comments received in the meeting.
Carried Forward.

JK

02/4.3                      Security Testing - Meeting Actions
- Review BS7799 for a list of vulnerabilities.
- Investigate the use of the Syntax Testing technique.
- Identify the difference between Configuration Auditing and Security Configuration Auditing.
- Secure State Transition needs to be developed, with investigation into whether this is a formal technique for inclusion.
- Obtain a copy of the Edvice document from Julian Harty (Performance/Stress Team).
- Apply comments as noted in the meeting.
Carried Forward.

BH

02/4.4                      Performance/Stress Testing – Meeting Actions
- Remove the Data Driven and Query Design technique from the standard.
- Clarify the wording and the use of the term ‘accuracy’.
- Investigate the Operational Profiling technique.
- Apply edits to the normative as detailed in the meeting
Carried Forward.

SA/JH

02/5.3                      Update Website – Completed Technique
Graham was actioned to forward the latest copy of the Installability technique for John Kent to post on the Website as a completed technique for review and comment.
Closed.

02/5.5                      SWP General Actions

02/5.6                      Glossary Update
Stuart requested that the term Test Condition be added to the glossary.
Carried Forward.

GT

02/6.3                      Installability/Compatibility Testing Team Leader
Steve Allott agreed to provide contact details for volunteers to lead the Interoperability/Compatibility Testing team.
Carried Forward.

SA

5. Plan approach to Domain Technique examples

5.1 Umbrella Document

                                The meeting agreed that the existing plan for the production of the umbrella document produced by Isabel in June was still applicable.

02/7.3                      Post Umbrella Document on Website
Isabel will update the skeleton umbrella document and forward to John for posting to the website.
New Action.

IE/JK

5.2 Glossary

                                New glossary entries will be generated in the production of domain technique examples. These can be posted in draft. Glossary entries can then be collated as the work progresses. The meeting suggested that the effectiveness of this process should be reviewed after a short period of time to determine whether a glossary review meeting was necessary.

02/7.4                      Review effectiveness of process for identifying glossary entries
Graham will table an agenda item for a future meeting to review the effectiveness of the process for identifying and reviewing glossary entries.
New Action.

GT

5.3 Generating Examples

                                Graham recapped on the new approach generating domain technique examples. This raised a couple of questions about existing (completed) techniques and how they fitted into the approach. It was agreed that all techniques would be included in the domain technique matrix, and that the existing documentation would be reviewed to determine whether updates were required.

02/7.5                      Include existing (Completed) techniques in domain technique matrix
Graham was asked to include the existing (completed) techniques for Memory Management, Reliability, Usability and Maintainability in the domain technique matrix.
New Action.

GT

                                Prior to generating examples the domain technique matrix would need to be circulated to the Team Leaders so that they could determine for each domain technique combination whether an example already existed in the documentation produced so far, whether an example was not applicable, or whether an example was required

02/7.6                      Team leaders review domain technique matrix
Graham agreed to circulate the domain technique matrix to the team leaders so that they could determine which examples already existed, were not applicable, or were required.
New Action.

GT/Team Leaders

                                In order for the teams to be able to produce the domain technique examples everyone in the working party would be asked to review the matrix and identify their individual areas or experience/expertise which could then be called upon in either an author or reviewer capacity by the teams as they generate examples.

02/7.7                      Circulate domain technique matrix to working party
Graham agreed to circulate the domain technique matrix to the members of the working party asking each member to identify the domain technique examples for which they had experience/expertise of. This would include a cover note explaining the new approach.
New Action.

GT/Working Party

                                In order for the teams to understand how to produce the new domain technique examples the meeting agreed that a process flow would be helpful in understanding the steps.

02/7.8                      Generate domain technique example process flow
Isabel volunteered to generate a process flow for the production of domain technique examples.
New Action.

IE

5.2 Review Meeting Schedule

                                The meeting agreed to defer the review meeting schedule until the September meeting when the workload could be better assessed by the Team Leaders.

5.2 Deliverables

                                The following table lists the deliverables that are to be produced from the next stage of the work.

TL= Team Leader

TM = Team Memer

6. Brainstorming of Domains:

                                The meeting reviewed the output from the initial domain brainstorming session and agreed upon the following list of domains.

                                With a finalised list of domains the domain technique matrix can be derived. This matrix includes existing completed techniques.

                                It was noted in the discussion that when examples are produced, they could cover more than one domain, and that these multi domains should be identified at the time of producing the example.

                                The following examples were identified to illustrate the types of domain technique examples that could be produced.

7. Any other business:

                                Graham volunteered to write an article about the revised domain technique approach for the December issue of the BCS SIGiST ‘The Tester’ magazine.

8. Date of Next Meeting:

The updated list of meetings is shown below and is also available on the SWP website. The next meeting will address the domain technique example workload planning. All are welcome to attend. Please note the slightly earlier time for this meeting of 1:00pm – 4:00pm.

                                All scheduled Team meetings will take place at PA (Consulting), 123 Buckingham Palace Road, London.