Acceptance Testing based on Relationships among Use Cases

In software development using use cases, such as use-case-driven object-oriented development, test scenarios for the acceptance test can be built from use cases. However, the manual listing of execution flows of complex use cases sometimes results in incomplete coverage of the possible execution flows, particularly if the relationships between use cases are complicated. Moreover, the lack of a widely accepted coverage definition for the acceptance test results in the ambiguous judgment of acceptance test completion. We propose a definition of acceptance test coverage using use cases and an automated generation procedure for test scenarios and skeleton codes under a specified condition for coverage while automatically identifying the execution flows of use cases. Our technique can reduce the incomplete coverage of execution flows of use cases and create objective standards for judging acceptance test completion. Moreover, we expect an improvement of the efficiency of acceptance tests because of the automated generation procedure for test scenarios and skeleton codes.