[Dev] Functional test coverage

[Aparna Kadakia]

Hello All,
As we gear up development of new features for 0.7, I would like to bring 
the topic of functional test development back on the table. We had the 
functional test writing sprint last month and the purpose was 2 fold:
1. get developers familiar enough with the test framework so they can 
contribute more tests
2. dedicate a day to writing and adding more tests to the existing suite

Unfortunately, we didn't get a lot of new tests from the sprint, atleast 
not as many as I had hoped for. Some of the feedback I received was:
1. one day wasn't just enough to write new libraries and test scripts. 
So a 2 day sprint would be useful.
2. some people continued their parcel writing exercise on the second day 
of the sprint, not leaving much time for them to write tests. So next 
time we need a dedicated 2 day functional test writing sprint.
3. some felt we didn't have enough test libraries to enable rapid test 
development.

Apart from the above, as an organizational goal we want to encourage a 
culture of writing tests with new feature development. Every time a new 
feature is developed and checked in, there should be a corresponding 
test written for it. Also, we have management approval for scheduling 
time in our overall release for writing tests so lack of time is not a 
contraint.

Let me know if there is anything that is blocking people from further 
test development or anything else we can do to help enable people to 
write more tests. As we all know, the more tests we have, better the 
quality and better the user experience.

Aparna