Internal standards are:
1. Naming and storage conventions for test artifacts.
2. Document standards
3. Test coding standards
4. Test reporting standards.
1. Naming and storage conventions for test artifacts: Every test artifact (test specification, test case, test results and so on) have to be named appropriately and meaningfully.
It enables
a) Easy identification of the product functionality.
b) Reverse mapping to identify the functionality corresponding to a given set of tests.
E.g. modules shall be M01, M02. Files types can be .sh, .SQL.
2. Documentation standards:
a) Appropriate header level comments at the beginning of a file that outlines the functions to be served by the test.
b) Sufficient inline comments, spread throughout the file
c) Up-to-Date change history information, reading all the changes made to the test file.
3. Test coding standards:
a) Enforce right type of initialization
b) Stipulate ways of naming variables.
c) Encourage reusability of test artifacts
d) Provide standard interfaces to external entities like operating system, hardware and so on.
4. Test reporting standard:
All the stakeholders must get a consistent and timely view of the progress of tests. It provides guidelines on the level of details that should be present in the test report, their standard formats and contents.
5.External Standards:
These are the standards made by an entity external to an organization. These standards are standards that a product should comply with, are externally visible and are usually stipulated by external parties.
The three types of external standards are:
Customer standard: refer to something defined by the customer as per his/her business requirement for the given product.
National Standard: refer to something defined by the regulatory entities of the country where the supplier / customer resides.
International Standard: are defined at international level and these are applicable to all customers across the globe.