Test Results to Customer

Test results are usually not shared with customers in detail.

An important measurement of release readiness is test coverage and success rates.

The customer typically gets the results of test results in the form of an available release.

Implementation to Customer

Implementation artifacts delivered to the customer must match the artifacts delivered to test.

It is possible for parts of the implementation to be withheld from the customer, so the released executable code is often a subset of the tested executable code.

The implementation may include internal support for test execution and performance profiling. These features may be turned off for the customer if they affect the behavior or performance of the product.

Another category of implementation artifacts that go directly to customers is screenshots included in documentation.

Requirements to Test Results

Test results must correspond to requirements in terms of scope. That is, there must be a correspondence between features as described in requirements artifacts and successful test results. This mapping is driven by the coverage of features by test plans.

When required features are ranked by priority, test results can be used to evaluate release readiness. A release cannot be approved until all required, essential, or "release defining" features have been tested and these tests have passed.