What Malaysian Software Students Think about Testing?

Software testing is one of the crucial supporting processes of software life cycle. Unfortunately for the software industry, the role is stigmatized, partly due to misperception and partly due to treatment of the role in the software industry. The present study aims to analyse this situation to explore what inhibit an individual from taking up a software testing career. In order to investigate this issue, we surveyed 82 senior students taking a degree in information technology, information and communication technology, and computer science at two Malaysian universities. The subjects were asked the PROs and CONs of taking up a career in software testing and what were the chances that they would do so. The study identified 7 main PROs and 9 main CONSs for starting a testing career, and indicated that the role of software tester has been perceived as a social role, with more soft skills connotations than technical implications. The results also show that Malaysian students have a more positive attitude towards software testing than their counterparts where similar investigations have been carried out

A multi-objective genetic algorithm for software development team staffing based on personality types

This paper proposes a multi-objective genetic algorithm for software project team staffing that focuses on optimizing human resource usage based on technical skills and personality traits of software developers. Human factors are recognized as critical aspects affecting the rate of success of software projects, as well as other properties, such as productivity, software quality, performance, and job satisfaction. However, managers often rely solely on technical criteria to staff their projects, which risks overlooking these important aspects of software development, such as the abilities and work styles of developers. The behaviour and scalability of the algorithm was validated against a series of hypothetical projects of varying size and complexity, and also through a real-world project of an SME in the local IT industry. The approach demonstrated a sufficient ability to generate both feasible and optimal staffing solutions by assigning developers most technically competent and suited personality-wise for each project task