At any stage within the SDLC the relevant documentation will help determine the scope of your testing.

The testing strategy or high-level test plan document is quite often used as the exit criteria.

As well as actually saying what you test, the exit criteria would include other details such as how well that tests needs to have been done.

For example it may state that you need to have tested everything and have found no serious errors but minor errors are acceptable.

 

Testing is an iterative process and as it is impossible to test everything we could just keep going round the loop indefinitely.

 

If the exit criteria has been stated in advance then testing can stop when the exit criteria has been met.

 

In other words we can thus say that the exit criteria is the criteria to be met in other to stop testing.

 

The exit criteria will therefore depend on the following: -

 

·         The risk to the business process of the project.

 

·         The time constraints within the project.

 

·         The resource constraints within the project.

 

·         The budget of the project.

 

However in practice it is not easy to state all this requirements as testing seldom goes to plan. It may be that it takes longer to fix errors than originally scheduled, the implementation date may be delayed or the staff composition is far too low to begin testing.

 

Whatever is planned initially, test managers will need to make decisions during the testing phase to keep the project on track. It is the test managers responsibility to provide quantifiable information as to the test coverage and the problems found so that informed decisions can be made as to whether the project is ready for implementation or not. The decision must therefore be subjective.

 

Ultimately there may be still be outstanding problems and it may not have been possible to test lower risk areas but as long as the system is deemed fit for purpose then the job has been done.

 

Some organisations might decide that when 100% testing has been done and all critical defects fixed, then the system can be implemented.

No matter what criteria are used to decide the implementation date, it all still depends on the risk to the business process.