Under normal circumstances components are separately unit-tested. As they pass their unit tests, a separate team integrates them into meaningful sets to exercise their interfaces. Components that have not been separately unit-tested are often integrated into the subsystem in a vein attempt to recapture a lost schedule. Such attempts actually cause more schedule delays. This is because a failure of a subsystem to satisfy an integration test plan may be caused now either by a fault in the interface or by a fault in the previously untested component. And much time is spent trying to determine which is the cause.
If you are managing a project, you can do a variety of things to avoid this situation. First and foremost is to develop an integration test plan early (for example, very soon after high-level design is complete). This plan should specify which components are most important to integrate first and in what order components may be integrated. Once you have written this down, allocate appropriate resources to coding and unit testing of specific high-priority components to ensure that integration testers don't spend an inordinate amount of time idle. Second, as it becomes evident that important components for integration testing are going to be unavailable as needed, have the integration testers start developing temporary scaffolding software to simulate the missing components.
Reference:
Dunn, R., Software Defect Removal, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984.
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr.
