Industry-academia collaborations in software testing: experience and success stories from Canada and Turkey : Special Issue Industry Academia Collaborations in Software Testing

Collaboration between industry and academia supports improvement and innovation in industry and helps to ensure industrial relevance in academic research. However, many researchers and practitioners believe that the level of joint industry–academia collaborations (IAC) in software engineering (SE) is still relatively very low, compared to the amount of activity in each of the two communities. The goal of the empirical study reported in this paper is to characterize a set of collaborative industry–academia R&D projects in the area of software testing conducted by the authors (based in Canada and Turkey) with respect to a set of challenges, patterns and anti-patterns identified by a recent Systematic Literature Review study, with the aim of contributing to the body of evidence in the area of IAC, for the benefit of SE researchers and practitioners in conducting successful IAC projects in software testing and in software engineering in general. To address the above goal, a pool of ten IAC projects (six completed, two failed and two ongoing) all in the area of software testing, which the authors have led or have had active roles in, were selected as objects of study and were analyzed (both quantitatively and qualitatively) with respect to the set of selected challenges, patterns and anti-patterns. As outputs, the study presents a set of empirical findings and evidence-based recommendations, e.g.: it has been observed that even if an IAC project may seem perfect from many aspects, one single major challenge (e.g., disagreement in confidentiality agreements) can lead to its failure. Thus, we recommend that both parties (academics and practitioners) consider all the challenges early on and proactively work together to eliminate the risk of challenges in IAC projects. We furthermore report correlation and interrelationship of challenges, patterns and anti-patterns with project success measures. This study hopes to encourage and benefit other SE researchers and practitioners in conducting successful IAC projects in software testing and in software engineering in general in the future

What industry wants from academia in software testing? Hearing practitioners’ opinions

The level of industry-academia collaboration (IAC) in software engineering in general and in software testing in particular is quite low. Many researchers and practitioners are not collaborating with the “other side” to solve industrial problems. To shed light on the above issue and to characterize precisely what industry wants from academia in software testing, we solicited practitioners’ opinions on their challenges in different testing activities and also the particularly relevant topics that they want the research community to work on. This short paper aims to draw the community’s attention to the important issue of strengthening IAC with the hope of more IAC in software testing in the areas of most importance to the industry

Survey data in PDF-What industry wants from academia in software testing research (phase 2)

Survey data in PDF-What industry wants from academia in software testing researc

Survey questions in PDF-What industry wants from academia in software testing research

<p>Survey questions in PDF-What industry wants from academia in software testing research</p> <p>We are a group of international software testing researchers (listed below) who are actively collaborating with the software industry in various areas of software testing.</p> <p>To further improve our collaborations with the software industry, we are gathering data from software testing practitioners via this brief survey to characterize precisely what industry wants from academia in software testing. This survey will take less than 5 minutes of your time and we appreciate your time in filling out this survey. The results of this survey will be published as a paper in near future. Please check the researchers’ Twitter accounts.</p

Comparing automated visual GUI testing tools: an industrial case study

Visual GUI testing (VGT) is a tool-driven technique, which uses image recognition for interaction and assertion of the behaviour of system under test. Motivated by a real industrial need, in the context of a large Turkish software and systems company providing solutions in the areas of defense and IT sector, we systematically planned and applied a VGT project in this industrial context. The goal of the initial phase of the project was to empirically evaluate two well-known VGT tools (Sikuli and JAutomate) to help the company select the best tool for a given testing project. Our results show that both two tools suffer from similar test ‘Replay’ problems such as the inability to find smaller-sized images. The repeatability of test executions was better for JAutomate in case of one of the two software under test (SUT) while it was comparable for the other. In terms of test development effort, for both tools, there were high correlations with number of steps in test suites, however the effort is reduced if test code is reused. The study has already provided benefits to the test engineers and managers in the company by increasing the know-how in the company w.r.t. VGT, and by identifying the challenges and their workarounds in using the tools. The industrial case study in this paper intends to add to the body of evidence in VGT and help other researchers and practitioners