In recent years, testing and validation have become crucial in the automotive ECU design process. Requirements of security and functional safety in addition to ever increasing connectivity have led to added complexity in the testing process. Testing is not only a mandatory base practice across the entire product development lifecycle, it also has a direct impact on product quality.
Several commercial frameworks (like GTest) are available to ease the process of testing. However, there are no mechanisms or tools available to evaluate the effectiveness of the test cases across the development lifecycle. Consider for example, a standard SDLC process model where a host of mandatory base practices for testing are defined at all levels. Although such a standard development model defines the process, it does not mandate any criteria or mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of the test cases and associated frameworks.
In addition, the assessment also serves as an indicator of quality by providing error propagation data across the product lifecycle.
In conclusion, the suggested approach is scalable and can be used at all levels of the development, thus progressively improving the efficiency and effectiveness of testing.