Schedule and location

Registration 

Speakers

Organizer

Professor MIka Mäntylä, University of Oulu, Finland.

Overview

Software testing is an important and costly activity of the software development lifecycle. It is an area of high practical relevance and poses many sophisticated scientific challenges that can only be addressed in a satisfying way if the industrial and the academic perspective are integrated to enable transfer of knowledge in both directions. Software testing is thus an applied research area preferably conducted jointly by industry and academia to finally improve software testing in industry. This improvement cannot sufficiently be investigated by an analytical research paradigm, but relies on empirical studies that can also be part of a knowledge exchange and improvement endeavor jointly between industry and academia. In this seminar, we present concepts, empirical research methods and research results from several projects that address improvement of software testing and industry-academia collaboration in software testing. We first cover the foundations of software testing and empirical software engineering. Then we present approaches to improve decision support in software testing based on risk information, i.e., risk-based test strategy development and requirements-based testing with defect taxonomies, and several related industrial studies. Furthermore, we provide challenges, patterns, anti-patterns and focus areas of industry-academia collaboration based on the results of several surveys. Finally, we present results of a literature study on test process assessment and improvement that takes academic formal and industrial grey literature into account. Finally, we present the role of grey literature in software engineering and guidelines for conducting multivocal literature reviews that take formal and grey literature into account.

Detailed Program

Day 1 (Sept 19, 2017)

• Foundations of Software Testing
  • Motivation
  • Basic Definitions
  • Testing Process
  • Software Quality and Risk
• Foundations of Empirical Software Engineering
  • Overview of Empirical Methods in Software Engineering (Surveys, Controlled Experiments, Case Studies, Data Mining Studies, Secondary Studies)
  • Importance of Empirical Research for Industry and Academia Collaboration
• Risk-Based Decision Support for Test Process Improvement
  • Risk-Based Test Strategy Development
  • Requirements-Based Testing with Defect Taxonomies
  • Empirical Case Studies
  • Model for Mutual Knowledge Exchange between Industry and Academia

 Day 2 (Sept 20, 2017)

• Industry-Academia Collaboration in Software Testing
  • Challenges, Patterns and Anti-Patterns of Industry-Academia Collaboration in Software Engineering
  • Industrial and academic focus areas in software testing
  • Surveys in Software Engineering
• Test Process Assessment and Test Process Improvement and Multivocal Literature Reviews
  • State of the Art and Practice on Test Process Assessment and Test Process Improvement
  • Grey Literature in Software Engineering
  • Multivocal Literature Reviews in Software Engineering

TENTATIVE TIMEPLAN

 Day 1 (Sept 19, 2017)

09:00 – 10:30:                    Foundations of Software Testing

10:30 –11:00: Break

11:00 – 12:30: Foundations of Empirical Software Engineering

12:30 – 13:30: Lunch Break

13:30 – 15:00: Risk-Based Decision Support for Test Process Improvement (Part 1)

15:00 – 15:30: Break

15:30 – 17:00 Risk-Based Decision Support for Test Process Improvement (Part 2)

Day 2 (Sept 20, 2017)

09:00 – 10:30:                    Industry-Academia Collaboration in Software Testing

10:30 –11:00: Break

11:00 – 12:30: Test Process Assessment and Test Process Improvement and MLR (Part 1)

12:30 – 13:30: Lunch Break

13:30 – 15:00: Test Process Assessment and Test Process Improvement and MLR (Part 2)

Readings

[1]       Garousi, V., Felderer, M., and Mäntylä, M. (2016) The need for multivocal literature reviews in software engineering: complementing systematic literature reviews with grey literature, 20th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2016), 26, ACM.

[2]       Garousi, V. and Felderer, M. (2017) Worlds Apart: A comparison of industry and academic focus areas in software testing. IEEE Software, IEEE. (online first)

[3]       Garousi, V., Felderer, M. and Hacaloğlu, T. (2017) Software test maturity assessment and test process improvement: A multivocal literature review. Information and Software Technology, 85, pp. 16-42, Elsevier.

[4]       Felderer, M. and Ramler, R. (2016) Risk orientation in software testing processes of small and medium enterprises: an exploratory and comparative study, Software Quality Journal, 24(3), pp. 519-548, Springer.

[5]       Felderer, M. and Beer, A. (2015) Mutual knowledge transfer between industry and academia to improve testing with defect taxonomies. Software Engineering & Management 2015 (SE 2015), pp. 238-242, GI.

[6]       Ramler, R. and Felderer, M. (2015) A Process for Risk-Based Test Strategy Development and Its Industrial Evaluation. The 16th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2015), pp. 355-371, Springer.

[7]       Felderer, M. and Beer, A. (2015) Using Defect Taxonomies for Testing Requirements. IEEE Software, 32(3), pp. 94-101, IEEE.

[8]      Felderer, M. and Schieferdecker, I. (2014) A taxonomy of risk-based testing. International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 16(5), pp. 559-568, Springer.

[9]      Felderer, M. and Ramler, R. (2014) A multiple case study on risk-based testing in industry. International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 16(5), pp. 609-625, Springer.

[10]   Felderer, M. and Ramler, R. (2014) Integrating Risk-Based Testing in Industrial Test Processes. Software Quality Journal, 22(3), pp. 543-575, Springer.

Credit points

Registration fee

This seminar is free-of-charge for Inforte.fi member organization's staff and their PhD students. For others the participation fee is 400 €. The participation fee includes access to the event and the event materials. Lunch and dinner are not included.