Redefining the Role of Testers in Organisational Transition to Agile Methodologies

Many challenges confront companies when they change their current software development process to an agile development methodology. Those challenges could be rather difficult but one that requires considerable attention is the integration of testing with development. This is because in heavyweight processes, as in the traditional waterfall approach, testing is a phase often conducted by testers as part of a quality assurance team towards the end of the development cycle whereas in the agile methodology testing is part of a continuous development activity with no specific “tester” role defined. In this paper we consider several options for testers when an organisation transit to agile methodology, and propose a new project mentor role for them. This role aims to utilize the knowledge that testers already have in both the business domain and the development technology together with their expertise in quality practices. This role will enhance the stature of testers as well as enable the company to effectively deploy the testers in the new environment. Motivations and benefits for this role are presented in this paper together with our plan for evaluation of this proposal

Association between alcohol consumption and dietary supplement intake of students from the University of Sarajevo

Introduction: Dietary supplements are an important source of vitamins and minerals that may help prevent several disease-causing biological pathways involved in one-carbon metabolism, including the suppression of cell proliferation, oxidative stress, nitric oxide synthesis, and angiogenesis. The present study aimed to assess the association between the intake of folate, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, and minerals and the consumption of alcohol among university students. Methods: This study was participated by students aged 19-22 years from the University of Sarajevo between 2017 and 2018. Using a questionnaire, we interviewed in a week them to collect information regarding age, socio-economic status, alcohol consumption, and dietary supplement intake. Then, we investigated the association between the baseline intake of folate, B vitamins, and minerals and that of alcohol consumption. Results: Most students consumed Vitamin B supplements (32%) and folic acid (10%). Dietary multivitamins and minerals were less prevalent in more than a year, accounting for 186 (23.9%) and 174 (24.3%) students, respectively, than those in less than a year. In a year, <20% of students consumed multivitamins 129 (16.6%) and minerals 116 (15.3%). Meanwhile, 256 (27.1%) students consumed alcohol. The Chi-square test of independence showed that drinking habits and the intake of such dietary supplements had no association (p > 0.05). Conclusion: An extremely low percentage of the participating students in Canton Sarajevo used dietary supplements of Vitamin B, folate, multivitamins, and minerals. Moreover, alcohol consumption and dietary supplement intake were not associated. Further research is needed to establish the best cost-effective public health system to achieve a sufficient intake of dietary supplements

Quality of Test Design in Test Driven Development

One of the most emphasised software testing activities in an Agile environment is the usage of the Test Driven Development (TDD) approach. TDD is a development activity where test cases are created by developers before writing the code, and all for the purpose of guiding the actual development process. In other words, test cases created when following TDD could be considered as a by-product of software development. However, TDD is not fully adopted by the industry, as indicated by respondents from our industrial survey who pointed out that TDD is the most preferred but least practised activity. Our further research identified seven potentially limiting factors for industrial adoption of TDD, out of which one of the prominent factor was lack of developers’ testing skills. We subsequently defined and categorised appropriate quality attributes which describe the quality of test case design when following TDD. Through a number of empirical studies, we have clearly established the effect of “positive test bias”, where the participants focused mainly on the functionality while generating test cases. In other words, there existed less number of “negative test cases” exercising the system beyond the specified functionality, which is an important requirement for high reliability systems. On an average, in our studies, around 70% of test cases created by the participants were positive while only 30% were negative. However, when measuring defect detecting ability of those sets of test cases, an opposite ratio was observed. Defect detecting ability of negative test cases were above 70% while positive test cases contributed only by 30%. We propose a TDDHQ concept as an approach for achieving higher quality testing in TDD by using combinations of quality improvement aspects and test design techniques to facilitate consideration of unspecified requirements during the development to a higher extent and thus minimise the impact of potentially inherent positive test bias in TDD. This way developers do not necessarily focus only on verifying functionality, but they can as well increase security, robustness, performance and many other quality improvement aspects for the given software product. An additional empirical study, evaluating this method, showed a noticeable improvement in the quality of test cases created by developers utilising TDDHQ concept. Our research findings are expected to pave way for further enhancements to the way of performing TDD, eventually resulting in better adoption of it by the industry

Software Testing in Agile Development : Technological and Organisational Challenges

The emerging industrial trend towards agile software development processes brings forth new concerns, challenges as well as opportunities. One of the main concerns is with respect to the achievable quality levels of the final product, for which testing is the well-known assurance mechanism. However, it is not well defined for the community on how to perform testing using existing expertise in an agile environment. This uncertainty may create confusion and contra productivity that can lead to testing teams and their practices considered as an obstacle for full implementation of agile processes within an organisation.   This thesis outlines our current research activities towards identifying and addressing important organisational and technical challenges in the agile environment.  In this context, we propose a new role for traditional testers which will enable them to integrate into the agile team as well as to fully exploit their knowledge in the new context. We have conducted an elaborate industrial survey on the preferences and practices with respect to the contemporary aspects of software testing and identified test-driven development as an important technical area for improvement.  A systematic review on empirical evidences related to test-driven development was performed subsequently, which revealed a list of factors limiting its widespread industrial acceptance. Knowledge of testing was identified as one of those factors and was further investigated in a controlled experiment performed with undergraduate students.   Our future works aim to confirm these research findings in wider as well as industrial settings and investigate other limiting factors in detail, with the aim of providing guidelines for achieving better utilisation of testers and testing practices.

Software Testing in Agile Development : Technological and Organisational Challenges

The emerging industrial trend towards agile software development processes brings forth new concerns, challenges as well as opportunities. One of the main concerns is with respect to the achievable quality levels of the final product, for which testing is the well-known assurance mechanism. However, it is not well defined for the community on how to perform testing using existing expertise in an agile environment. This uncertainty may create confusion and contra productivity that can lead to testing teams and their practices considered as an obstacle for full implementation of agile processes within an organisation.   This thesis outlines our current research activities towards identifying and addressing important organisational and technical challenges in the agile environment.  In this context, we propose a new role for traditional testers which will enable them to integrate into the agile team as well as to fully exploit their knowledge in the new context. We have conducted an elaborate industrial survey on the preferences and practices with respect to the contemporary aspects of software testing and identified test-driven development as an important technical area for improvement.  A systematic review on empirical evidences related to test-driven development was performed subsequently, which revealed a list of factors limiting its widespread industrial acceptance. Knowledge of testing was identified as one of those factors and was further investigated in a controlled experiment performed with undergraduate students.   Our future works aim to confirm these research findings in wider as well as industrial settings and investigate other limiting factors in detail, with the aim of providing guidelines for achieving better utilisation of testers and testing practices.