Alessandro Collino, a computer science and information engineer with Onion S.p.A. who works on agile projects,...

Transcribed Image Text:

Alessandro Collino, a computer science and information engineer with Onion S.p.A. who works on agile projects, told us about an experience where code coverage fell suddenly and disastrously. His agile team developed middleware for a real-time operating system on an embedded system. He explained: A TDD approach was followed to develop a great number of good unit tests oriented to achieve good code coverage. We wrote many effective acceptance tests to check all of the complex functionalities. After that, we instrumented the code with a code coverage tool and reached a statement coverage of 95%. The code that couldn't be tested was verified by inspection, leading them to declare 100% of statement coverage after ten four-week sprints. After that, the customer required to us to add a small feature before we delivered the software product. We implemented this request and applied the code optimization of the compiler. This time, when we ran the acceptance tests, the result was disastrous; 47% of acceptance tests failed, and the statement coverage had fallen down to 62%! (a) The case study mentions the following: "The code that couldn't be tested was verified by inspection, leading them to declare 100% of statement coverage after ten four-week sprints. After that, the customer required to us to add a small feature before we delivered the software product." Discuss how Alessandro Collino's agile team could have avoided the disastrous test results if a sprint planning phase was setup. [6 marks] Alessandro Collino, a computer science and information engineer with Onion S.p.A. who works on agile projects, told us about an experience where code coverage fell suddenly and disastrously. His agile team developed middleware for a real-time operating system on an embedded system. He explained: A TDD approach was followed to develop a great number of good unit tests oriented to achieve good code coverage. We wrote many effective acceptance tests to check all of the complex functionalities. After that, we instrumented the code with a code coverage tool and reached a statement coverage of 95%. The code that couldn't be tested was verified by inspection, leading them to declare 100% of statement coverage after ten four-week sprints. After that, the customer required to us to add a small feature before we delivered the software product. We implemented this request and applied the code optimization of the compiler. This time, when we ran the acceptance tests, the result was disastrous; 47% of acceptance tests failed, and the statement coverage had fallen down to 62%! (a) The case study mentions the following: "The code that couldn't be tested was verified by inspection, leading them to declare 100% of statement coverage after ten four-week sprints. After that, the customer required to us to add a small feature before we delivered the software product." Discuss how Alessandro Collino's agile team could have avoided the disastrous test results if a sprint planning phase was setup. [6 marks]