Test Case Prioritization Using Fault Severity

Regression testing is the process of executing all or some of the tests that already have been conducted to ensure that no new errors have been introduced in the previously tested code. It is very expensive technique. To reduce the cost of regression technique and to increase the effectiveness of testing process we can prioritize the test cases. To date there are number of techniques have been proposed for test case prioritization to achieve the testing objective early in the testing process. One such objective is the increase rate of fault detection early in the testing process. All these techniques are based on code coverage and focus on finding the maximum no of faults rather than severity of faults. In this paper we have proposed a new approach which considers the severity of faults based on requirement prioritization. Aim is to find the severe faults early in the testing process and hence to improve the quality of the software according to customer point of view. Experiment results indicate that our prioritization approach frequently yields faults with high severity.