Software Testing: Analysis of the British Airways System Failure

This report examines the British Airways system failure, which resulted from an outage with its intermediary travel tech supplier, Amadeus, causing significant flight cancellations and affecting their website and mobile applications. The failure originated from BA's ground-handling agents' inability to create flight pieces containing crucial aircraft information. The report details the impact, including the cancellation of over a thousand flights. It also suggests that the failure could have been avoided if the airline had not made its IT employees redundant. Furthermore, the report includes a case study on a multiple-choice study program, outlining test cases categorized by input conditions, output circumstances, and boundary conditions related to learner answers, and also identifies error-guessing test cases for the program.

Running Head: SOFTWARE TESTING 1
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Name
Institution

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Describing a real software failure, its impact, and the possible ways the failure could have been
avoided.
The British Airways system failure is a failure that happened as a result of the grounding
of flights around the world (Garousi & Mäntylä, 2016). The origin of the failure was as a result
of an outage intermediary travel tech supplier Amadeus. Amadeus is a voyage tech outsourcer
which is acknowledged for delivering software for ordering flights to airlines. Therefore, the
BA's ground-handling agents were not in a position to create many pieces for airline trips. The
pieces were crucial because they contained important information which consisted of the
aircrafts load as well as its trim, or the center of gravity. Without this information, the pilots were
not in a position to identify the airplane's point of balance thus it was difficult for the plane to
take off (Helmuth, McPhee, & Spector, 2016).
The impact of this failure caused the airlines to cancel all their intended flights beginning
from Heathrow and Gatwick. The effects of these failures affected more than one thousand
flights (Jan et. al, 2016). The website centers for the British were also affected as well as mobile
applications. In accordance with the reports gotten from the GMB Union, avoiding the failure
was possible only if the airline company did not make it's IT employees redundant back in the
year 2016.
Multiple choice study program case study
List test cases
Test cases from the input conditions
1. The field for question number has non-numeric value
2. 999-question exam
3. 51-question exam

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4. Exam with 50-questions
5. Exam with 1-question
6. Exam with 0-question
7. 80-character title
8. 1-character title
9. Missing title record
10. Empty input file
11. A learner possesses a single record of answers, whereas the available answer records are
only two
12. The greater learner is the end learner on the file.
13. The greater student is the first learner on the file
14. A learner possesses two records of answers, but the correct record of answers is only one
record
15. The top learner is the final learner in the file
16. 201 students
17. 200 students
18. 1 student
19. 0 students
20. single also little right-responds records
21. single also many right-responds records
22. No right response record past the heading record
Output circumstances trial cases
23. Similar grades were received by all the students

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24. Varying grades were received by all the students
25. Not all students but the majority got similar grades
26. one student got 0 grade
27. one student got 100 in grade
28. Learner posses the uppermost identifier value achievable.
29. The student number is such that the report is large enough to occupy a single page.
30. The students’ number is such that the entire student except one occupies a single page.
31. The average is at its utmost ( all the scores by the students is wonderful)
32. The average is zero (the grade for every student is zero)
33. There is a maximum standard deviation
34. There is zero standard deviation (same grades have been gotten by every student)
35. The first question is responded right by every learner
36. The first question is responded wrongly by every learner
37. Every learner responds to the final question right
38. Every learner responds to the final question wrong.
39. The questions number is such that the report is large enough to occupy only a single
page.
40. The questions number is such every question except bone occupies one page.
The boundary conditions in relation to the answers given by the learner
1. Every one of the learners answers the first question right
2. Every one of the learners responds to the first question wrong
3. Every one of the learners responds to the final question right
4. Every one of the learners responds to the final question wrong

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5. The questions are arranged such that they can occupy a single page
6. The questions are arranged such all of them fit on a single page except one
Identify some error guessing test cases for the program
Some of the errors guessing techniques that can be viewed here include first Inputting
empty spaces in the fields, additionally; you can try entering values that are not valid into the text
fields (Malviya, 2019). Submitting the values without specifying can also be used to guess if
there are errors in the program. To guess the existence of errors, you can also upload the files
that are more than the limits set for uploading.
References
Garousi, V., & Mäntylä, M. V. (2016). When and what to automate in software testing? A multi-
vocal literature review. Information and Software Technology, 76, 92-117.
Helmuth, T., McPhee, N. F., & Spector, L. (2016). Lexicase selection for program synthesis: a
diversity analysis. In Genetic Programming Theory and Practice XIII (pp. 151-167).
Springer, Cham.
Jan, S. R., Shah, S. T. U., Johar, Z. U., Shah, Y., & Khan, F. (2016). An innovative approach to
investigate various software testing techniques and strategies. International Journal of

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Scientific Research in Science, Engineering and Technology (IJSRSET), Print ISSN,
2395-1990.
Malviya, A. (2019). Software Testing: Concepts and Issues. Available at SSRN 3351067.