In a final look at the project, it is seen that testing has helped to make the software better. The initial prototype came with many bugs, deficiencies and deviations from the customer guidelines. Partly due to the fact that the testing plan was in place before any major chunk of code was written and partly because of group trends, we have implemented an iterative testing schedule. This is in contrast to the largely waterfall and sequential setup that was followed so far.

The first obvious problem was that the testing schedule was developed to soon. There was no way of knowing exactly what was going on, and only general (or obvious) aspects of the system had tests designed for them. Most bugs that were identified were found while following some other test process. Indeed, those bugs would not have been found if it wasn't for that. So in a way the testing plan was more useful than it may appear.

Our test plan also did not take into account deviations from the specifications. While there were not very many of them, they could present a serious problem. Fortunately most bugs and design problems have been identified and fixed.

The iterative method came about mainly because of the structure of the programming team. Most of the coding was done by one or two individuals, and so there was a large delay between the initial prototype release and a final version. During this time bugs were found by the testing team and submitted to the coding team for review. All this while actual coding was still going on. In general, we are fairly happy with this forced situation, the software turned out well made.

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