University of Hyderabad, India1, Fondazione Bruno Kessler-IRST, Trento, Italy2,
One of the major risks for software projects is the mismatch between implemented functionalities and customer's needs. In order to minimize this risk, agile methodologies propose to involve the customer in all phases of development. Customers possess knowledge about the requirements to be implemented, their relative importance and the success criteria for the software project. In Extreme Programming, this knowledge is exploited for release and iteration planning during the so called Planning Game.
In this paper, we propose an extension of the Planning Game with a phase explicitly devoted to acceptance test definition and prioritization (Acceptance Test Planning). The customer prioritizes acceptance tests in coordination with the test engineer and defines the value they bring to the user. Prioritized acceptance tests are then available to the next development phases. Preliminary results obtained on a case-study indicate that the technique is effective in exercising the most critical functionalities early.