Design methodology for creating an effective test environment

A test environment needs to be informative, versatile and maintainable in order to efficiently meet aggressive development and integration schedules, reduce long term support costs and provide test station life-cycle extension, independent of the level of test being performed. For a test environment to support these requirements, it must contain features that may be developed independently, yet operate within a tightly integrated environment. Each of the test environment's features will be analyzed for impact on the short term and long term costs associated with a test system. It is the intent of this paper to discuss and provide a design methodology that simplifies and reduces each of these factors.