A survey of software testing practices in Costa Rica

Software testing is an essential activity in software development projects for delivering high quality products. In a previous study, we reported the results of a survey of software engineering practices in the Costa Rican industry. To analyze more in depth the specific software testing practices among practitioners, we replicated a previous survey conducted in South America. Our objective was to characterize the state of the practice based on practitioners use and perceived importance of software testing practices. This survey evaluated 42 testing practices grouped in three categories: processes, activities and tools. A total of 92 practitioners responded to the survey. The participants indicated that: (1) task for recording of the results of tests, documentation of test procedures and cases, and reexecution of tests when the software is modified are useful and im-portant for software testing practitioners. (2) Acceptance and system testing are the two most useful and important testing types. (3) Tools for recording defects and the effort to fix them (bug tracking) and the availability of a test database for reuse are useful and important. Regarding the use of practices, the participants stated that (4) Planning and designing of software testing before coding and evaluating the quality of test artifacts are not a regular practice. (5) There is a lack of measurement of defect density and test coverage in the industry; and (6) tools for automatic generation of test cases and for estimating testing effort are rarely used. This study gave us a first glance at the state of the practice in software testing in a thriving and very dynamic industry that currently employs most of our computer science professionals. The benefits are twofold: for academia, it provides us with a road map to revise our academic offer, and for practitioners it provides them with a first set of data to benchmark their practices.Universidad Estatal a Distancia /[Comiex-19-2017]/UNED/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[834-B7-749]/UCR/Costa RicaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ingeniería::Centro de Investigaciones en Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación (CITIC)UCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Ingeniería::Facultad de Ingeniería::Escuela de Ciencias de la Computación e Informátic