Software and system testing cost the commercial and defense industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually. In addition, conducting each set of tests takes multiple man-months, delaying time to market of key technologies. In this current economic environment, organizations are looking for ways to reduce the cost of testing and time to market while ensuring that defects are not passed on to the customer.
At the same time, organizations are very reluctant to change their standard testing processes due to the heavy cost of field failures, regulatory concerns, and risk-averse culture. This article describes a comparative study undertaken to assess the benefits of using Orthogonal Arrays (OA) for generating test plans in IT systems in the financial services industry. The paper also discusses the pros and cons of OA testing compared to other testing approaches like pairwise testing or NWay testing.