Reusability in Software / QA Testing - Conceptual Understanding

The Software QA / testing domain is a very rich field that could be mined for the benefits of reusability. Most of all QA actions such as clicking an object, opening a page, executing a command, verifying the output, generating different kinds of test data etc., are very generic in nature and wide in scope, they are just molded a bit as per the specifics of any project.

Before we discuss about how reusability can be implemented, let’s first have a look at the benefits that reusability brings; and the challenges which confront its implementation. Having a look at the both of these will help us appreciate reusability to a higher degree.

Benefits of Reusability

The entire scope of this discussion is to promote reusability within an organizational context. The reason for this is the benefits that it brings all-round to people, projects, products and the organization. Higher quality products are continuously produced due to recurring use and test. Each successive use of a reusable asset will re-test it, and the more tests are performed, it’s more likely that existing defects (if any) will be found and corrected. Every successful reuse of an asset increases it reliability level, increases its usefulness in the reuse repository, and decreases the risk of failure. Although time will be required to assess the applicability of a given reusable asset to a new system, that time is minimal in comparison to time that will be required for development of an entirely new component.

All of the benefits are self-explanatory and do not warrant any further explanation.

• Reduced Implementation time
• Improved productivity
• Greater modularity
• Improved maintainability
• Greater quality
• Ability to make rapid changes
• Exploit new features globally, quickly

Learn about the challenges faced while implementing Reusability here : Challenges for Reusability in Software / QA Testing.