Practical problems with modeling variability in test cases: an industrial perspective

There is growing trend towards using Commercial off the shelf (COTS) software within enterprises, as against developing custom-built software. IT service providers, who specialize in executing COTS implementation projects, have to deal with the problem of managing variability within the implementations at different customer enterprises. Customer specific implementations would have variations across different dimensions such as product used, industry vertical, business processes, navigational flows, user interface, technology platform and so on. In this paper, we describe the practical problems faced by service providers in managing variability within test cases for COTS implementations. We draw upon the experience shared with us by practitioners from COTS implementation testing teams and teams who have been developing reusable test cases for various COTS products. We motivate the need for further research on test notations/meta-models for business applications and variability management within these models.