Defect Bash - Literature Review
Defect bash is a co-located testing session performed by a group of people. We performed a systematic review of the academic and grey literature, i.e. informally published writings, of the defect bash. Altogether, we found 44 items (17 academic and 27 grey literature sources) that were identified useful for the review. Based on the review the definition of defect bash is presented, benefits and limitations of using defect bash are given. Finally, the process of doing defect bash is outlined. This review provides initial understanding on how defect bash could be useful in achieving the software quality and lays foundation for further academic studies of this topic.
Microdynamics of Process Evolution
Presents the seven basic steps of opportunistic software process evolution. (1) Notice problems in products or outcomes. (2) Choose an important or chronic problem and look for a way to solve it, in whole or in part. (3) Conceive of a new, borrowed or modified process that could solve the problem at an acceptable cost and in an acceptable time frame. (4) Try the new process on a real project. (5) Adjust the process in light of experience and in light of the new problems that were created by the process. (6) If the solution is worth perpetuating, look for a way to make it more efficient or durable by adding infrastructure (such as documentation, training or tool support). Otherwise, try to understand why it doesn't seem to work. (7) Return to step 1. Pay attention to projects on the scale of hours, cubicles, people and episodes. In complex cognitive processes like software development, if process evolution is foiled on the micro scale, it will be foiled utterly.
Do test cases really matter? An experiment comparing test case based and exploratory testing
Licentiate thesis submitted for official examination for the degree of Licentiate in Technology. Manual testing tasks are still a highly relevant part of most software development efforts and it is unlikely that manual tests, in the foreseeable future, will be replaced with automated testing. Human testers seem to have many benefits over automated approaches that make manual testing an effective approach in most software development contexts. These characteristics of humans as testers include, creativity, intelligence, domain knowledge, and ability to recognise a variety of problems efficiently. Exploratory testing (ET) is a software testing approach that is based on the creativity, skills, and other strengths of a human tester instead of detailed predesigned test cases. Reports on ET have proposed that it, in some situations, could be much more efficient than test case based testing (TCT). This thesis reports the results of a controlled student experiment, comparing the defect detection effectiveness of system level functional testing with TCT and ET approaches. In addition, a literature study covering relevant literature on both test case based and exploratory testing is presented. In the experiment, the defect detection effectiveness of the two approaches were compared by using 79 M.Sc. student subjects who participated in two controlled testing sessions as part of the software testing course in TKK. The experimental design was a one-factor block design with a single blocking variable. The software under test was a real open source software product, jEdit, with actual and artificially seeded defects. The results of the experiment show that ET approach revealed more defects. However, the difference was not statistically significant. ET seemed to better reveal usability defects, user interface defects, and defects that are obvious or very difficult to find. The results do not show a significant difference between the two approaches in terms of perceived coverage and quality, or in the amount of problems encountered in applying the testing approaches. An interesting finding is that TCT produced a significantly higher number of false defect reports, i.e., defect reports that were incomprehensible, duplicate, or reported a non-existent defect. The experiment data shows no benefit of using predesigned test cases in terms of defect detection effectiveness, even though the test case design required a considerable amount of additional effort. The findings of the literature review identified a lack of research on exploratory testing and more generally test execution activities in manual testing. Based on the results of this …