A Test Scenario Design Methodology Based on Business Context Modeling and Its Evaluation

Abstract

To make a business competitive advantage with the information system, it is necessary to validate the system in order to assure the system performs the business as the users expect. While the business context is becoming diverse, conventional acceptance test only confirms that the system meets the requirements specifications, and hard to assure the quality of use in the business context. This article proposes a methodology to design a set of test scenarios effectively in diverse usage context based on the model of business context. We propose a method to identify and analysis the business context with an extension of Empathy Maps. To model the business context, we propose the BC (Business Context) matrix, which represents the dependency between business process and properties of the business context identified. With the BC matrix, we propose a method to design a set of test scenarios from the perspective of Personas. We applied the proposed methodology to a large-scale human resource management system shared by 29 ministries and agencies of the Japanese government, and evaluated the effectiveness of the methodology.