Software Entry-Exit criteria


There are lots of discussions about the Entry-Exit criteria within the management for a software release. Here I am summarizing few points that I think should be a solution for most of those dialogues.

Entry criteria –
Entry criteria means when the release should be accepted for testing. Now there are three filters for entry criteria:
1. The first Entry criteria should be from the Configuration Management team. They should accept the release only if the release was being thoroughly unit tested by the development team.
2. The second Entry criteria should be from the Test team. They should accept the release only when the release was being thoroughly sanity tested by the Configuration Management team.
3. The third Entry criteria should be within the Test team. They should perform the acceptance testing and if passed, they should start performing the major testing for the release.

If any of these entry criteria failed, the release should not be accepted by any of the team and return back to the development team.

Exit criteria –
Exit criteria means when the release should be green signaled or red signaled by the test team. The exit criteria can be of three categories:
1. The first exit criteria are in case when any of the above entry criteria failed.
2. The second exit criteria are in case when the test team has found some major or critical bugs in the system while performing the major testing effort. The number of bugs that will decide the fate of the release should be discussed and mentioned in the test plan.
3. The third exit criteria is when complete testing has been done, bugs has been logged and test report has been sent to the development manager.

If the release fails due to any of the two reasons mentioned in the Exit criteria, a revision kit should be delivered by the development team. And if the release has gone through the third point mentioned in the Exit criteria, a correction kit should be delivered to the test team.

-- Sanat Sharma