A SOFTWARE TESTING ASSESSMENT TO MANAGE PROJECT TESTABILITY

The demand for testing services is, to a large extend a ?derived demand? influenced directly by the manner in which prior developed activities are undertaken. The early stages of a structured software development life cycle (SDLC) project can often run behind schedule, shrinking the time available for performing adequate testing especially when software release deadlines have to be met. This situation fosters the need to influence pre-testing activities and manage the testing effort efficiently. Our research examines how to measure testability of a SDLC project before testing begins. It builds on the ?design for testability? perspective by introducing a ?manage for testability? perspective. Software testability focuses on whether the activities of the SDLC process are progressing in ways that enable the testing team to find software product defects if they exist. To address this challenge, we develop a software testing assessment. This assessment is designed to provide testing managers with information needed to: (1) influence pre-testing activities in ways that ultimately increase testing efficiency and effectiveness, and (2) plan testing resources to optimize efficient and effective testing. We developed specific software testing assessment measures through interviews with key informants. We present data collected for the measures for large-scale structured software development projects to illustrate the assessment?s usefulness and application

A survey on software testability

Context: Software testability is the degree to which a software system or a unit under test supports its own testing. To predict and improve software testability, a large number of techniques and metrics have been proposed by both practitioners and researchers in the last several decades. Reviewing and getting an overview of the entire state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice in this area is often challenging for a practitioner or a new researcher. Objective: Our objective is to summarize the body of knowledge in this area and to benefit the readers (both practitioners and researchers) in preparing, measuring and improving software testability. Method: To address the above need, the authors conducted a survey in the form of a systematic literature mapping (classification) to find out what we as a community know about this topic. After compiling an initial pool of 303 papers, and applying a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria, our final pool included 208 papers. Results: The area of software testability has been comprehensively studied by researchers and practitioners. Approaches for measurement of testability and improvement of testability are the most-frequently addressed in the papers. The two most often mentioned factors affecting testability are observability and controllability. Common ways to improve testability are testability transformation, improving observability, adding assertions, and improving controllability. Conclusion: This paper serves for both researchers and practitioners as an "index" to the vast body of knowledge in the area of testability. The results could help practitioners measure and improve software testability in their projects