Factor oriented requirement coverage based system test case prioritization of new and regression test cases

Test case prioritization involves scheduling test cases in an order that increases the effectiveness in achieving some performance goals. One of the most important performance goals is the rate of fault detection. In this chapter a new prioritization technique has been proposed for system level Test Case Prioritization (TCP) from software requirement specification, to improve user satisfaction with quality software that can also be cost effective with improved rate of severe fault detection. In this proposed prioritization technique, the test cases are prioritized based on weights of the test cases. The procedure for computing the weights of the test cases is two fold. Firstly, to calculate the weights of the requirements, the factors that influence the requirements are identified as (1) Customer assigned priority of requirements (2) Developer-perceived code implementation complexity (3) Changes in requirements (4) Fault impact (5) Completeness and (6) Traceability. Subsequently the impacts of these factors on the requirements are quantified by assigning values in a ten point scale. With these factor values the weight of each requirement is computed. Secondly, the test cases are mapped towards corresponding requirements by establishing a knowledge based mapping between them. Also two new validation techniques are devised to validate the proposed prioritization technique. The first validation technique is based on the analysis of the faults detected and the second is based on the analysis of the