A business view on testing erp systems with value-based requirements coverage

Abstract

Testing has been identified as a critical factor for a successful implementation of ERP systems. However, most testing activities are still value-neutral and do not utilize the information about the system’s achievable business value, which is a particularly promising improvement for testing of business software and ERP systems. In this paper we therefore present an approach for value-based coverage measurement that can be used to align the testing effort to the value associated with requirements and typical usage scenarios. It has been implemented as part of the commercial test tool TOSCA Testsuite by Tricentis and was successfully applied in real-world projects. The results demonstrated its ability to adequately capture the distribution of the business value involved in different functional units. Furthermore, when compared with a value-neutral and a pure requirements-based approach for test case prioritization, it produced a higher benefit curve and an early positive ROI from testing.