Conventional wisdom has it that the purpose of testing is to find errors. In some sense, that's true, but there's more to it than that. In this Testing and Evaluation section, we present an introductory look at the process of testing products (software or hardware, custom developed or COTS) for Year 2000 (Y2K) compliance. Major issues discussed include:

• Testing and evaluation and how they apply during both assessment and validation
• Renovation strategies and their effect on the testing process
• How to evaluate a product
• Critical date transitions (Midnight, December 31, 1999 isn't the only one)
• A process for deciding how to allocate resources when there's more to do than you have time for or can afford
• Interface management
• Confidence assessment: quantitative technique

Downloadable Test and Evaluation Plans

• Evaluating Systems for Year 2000 Compliance  [PDF]
• Year 2000 (Y2K) Compliance Test Plan (a Generic Test Plan)   [PDF]
• Year 2000 System-of-Systems Test Plan  [PDF]

For More Information

For general information about testing issues, including a listing of tools, please take a look at the following:

• Middle Tennessee State University's Software Testing On-line Resources web page
• Kerry Zallar's Software Testing Stuff web page