ODC - Orthogonal Defect Classification

System Test Triggers

System test activities deal with system wide and cross-system issues, including hardware and software environment implications as well as cyclic and sometimes demanding workload volumes.

Recovery

corresponds with validating the product's ability to recover from error conditions. Customers prefer that failures never occur. If a fault does become a failure, however, it is highly desirable that the system or product is able to recover from the defect and carry on with as little impact to the customer as possible. One of the tasks of system test is to inject faults in order to evaluate the system or product's ability to recover gracefully.

Start (initialize) and Restart

can be related to Recovery, since they are associated with starting or restarting a system following an earlier shutdown or complete system or product failure. It may have appeared that the system or product recovered successfully from a failure, only to find later that critical information was lost or control areas overlaid.

Workload Volume/Stress

is exemplified by the ability (or inability) of a system or product to operate effectively and without failure at or near a resource limit. The mechanisms which system test uses to emulate to these scenarios could include heavy network traffic, many users, or a large number of system transactions, among others.

Hardware Configuration and Software Configuration

are triggers which cause failures to surface that are related to unusual or unanticipated configurations. The industry is volatile with regard to software and hardware products. The need for these products to interact and interface successfully is of utmost concern. Attempting to ensure this is an important system test activity.

Normal Mode

is a trigger which says, in effect, that no special conditions needed to exist in order for the failure to surface. There is strong evidence to suggest that the real trigger is, in fact, associated with an earlier activity. When classifying field reported failures, if the environment description sounded like 'Normal Mode' there would almost always clearly be an associated inspection Trigger. Aside from the broader implications, there is one very specific application of this phenomenon. A product, against which a high percentage of defects classified as Normal Mode surfaces during system test, would most certainly benefit from revisiting earlier activities before it is released to the public.