Why should I be interested in this process?

In 2002, the Software Testing Institute conducted a survey of software testers to reflect the nature and state of the software testing industry. This survey can be found at
http://www.softwaretestinginstitute.com/2002IndustrySurveyResults/STI2002IndustrySurveyResults_frame.htm . Among other things, the survey found:
1) A majority of the responders (78.32%) stated that they only spend 26% to 75% of their day actually conducting tests.
2) Over 30% of their day is spent writing test plans or change requests. This would also include the artifacts known as test plans/test scripts/test cases.
3) 55.79% of the responders stated that the most likely reasons for an increase in software defects are shorter development and testing cycles or larger amounts of functionality being delivered in a release.
4) 25.45% of the responders stated that the most likely reasons for a decrease in software defects are more tests conducted on functionality or better coverage of the functionality by existing tests.

The results of this survey state that more tests or tests with better coverage would decrease software defects. However, the results also state that two of the main reasons for an increase in software defects are shorter development & test cycles and an increasing amount of functionality being delivered each release.

These results present us with two dilemmas. First, how can more tests be planned during shorter test cycles? Second, how can we ensure that the test cases are of good quality and code coverage?

These points are a fact of life in today's Agile development world. Customers need more functionality in shorter amounts of time. In order for them to be competitive, they need to be able to do what they want to do now. If you can't deliver, they will find someone who can.

In addition to this, we now live in a global business community. Every day, more U.S. companies are looking to other countries for technical labor. We have seen India become an economic giant in a matter of a few years due to their highly educated labor pool. We are now seeing companies dip into the labor pools in Eastern Europe, Central and South America, the Phillipines, and China. Having a multi-national labor force adds complications. First and foremost are communication issues. If you have testing artifacts written in standard American English, they may not be straight-forward for someone who learned English in a formal, British manner. Even in India where English is spoken by a large percentage of the population, they have their own way of saying things that is completely different from how an American would say it. So, take a large number of test plans/test scripts/test cases written by Americans and assign them to a testing team in India or Brazil and see how much confusion will result.

The Component-Based Testing Approach allows a company's subject matter experts ("SMEs") to compose a set of accurate, clear, and current steps for a test case. These steps can then be used by the general testing team within their test cases. This helps in composing better quality test cases and with the time saved by not re-creating a step each time that a test case is written, more test cases.