Use Your ESP to Test Software Packages (Continued)

Request
A request for a new package is initiated as part of the overall software lifecycle for a product within the network. At any point in the process, the sponsor for the product—the person responsible for the evolution of the product within your network—may want to know the status of the request.

Integration
This is the first technical stage. It involves the initial creation and testing of the package. It includes the following activities:

• Discovery. The first test is always an interactive discovery and analysis of a new product, especially its installation process. This phase serves to identify the elements of the technical architecture for the product and its customization and configuration requirements. It serves to create a detailed interactive installation checklist to be used in the next stage.
• Initial Package Creation. Once the first stages of discovery have been performed, it is time to automate the installation or create the initial package. Depending on the software product, this stage will include either a setup capture or an import of a Windows Installer file within the packaging tool, and configure it according to corporate specifications. The result is an automated installation file, which is imported into the corporate software repository.

Product Testing
This phase focuses on testing the new automated installation. It covers three steps:

• System Test. This test focuses on the evaluation of the automated, or "silent," installation. It is also called unit testing because it tests the installation by itself. This test is performed on a clean machine through a "pull" installation—launching the installation from a server share containing the new package.
• Security Issue Identification. Are there any security issues with the product as installed during system tests? Are there modifications required to operate it with user rights?
• Package Automation. Now that all of the package's components have been identified, it is time to finalize the package through the inclusion of scripts and other external components, and then automate the package for deployment. This refined package will serve to support the next battery of tests.