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Is the mystery Borland suitor Serena?
Borland software is considering an offer from another company after a preliminary deal with MicroFocus. Is Serena the new company?
06/30/2009 01:55 PM EST

Windows 7 - An eBayer's dream product?
Windows 7 pre-orders can make people money on eBay.
06/29/2009 03:48 PM EST

Know thine cloud provider
Cloud computing require companies to understand compliance and regulation. Third parties will play a big role in regulated industries.
06/29/2009 02:58 PM EST

 

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Testers Spend Too Much Time Testing


By Edward J. Correia
September 4, 2007 — 
"Too much time is spent on software testing." That's according to Elfriede Dustin, an independent software testing and quality consultant at IDT in the Washington D.C. area. "As software programs are increasing in complexity, testing times only seem to have increased," she says, citing a 2002 study that puts costs of debugging, testing and verification activities at between 50 and 75 percent of the total cost of development.

Backing up those findings is a survey conducted by IDT, in which respondents indicated long software-testing timelines and high percentages of testing time relative to the software's life cycle (see chart). "The survey's goal was to determine software testing–related issues to provide solutions while reaching as many software testers with a wide demographic as possible," Dustin says.

The survey, which is still live, was sent to tens of thousands of test engineers around the world, posted on QA user sites and advertised on various government sites. So far, it has collected about 200 responses, 74 percent of which are from the U.S. About half of respondents work for companies with 1,000 or more employees.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said that more than 30 percent of their total project was spent on testing, and almost one in five said testing took 50 to 75 percent of the project's time.

The Answer? Automation
Dustin suggests that an obvious solution to these increased testing times is to automate. "The quality of the test effort is improved through automated regression testing, build verification testing, multi-platform compatibility tests, and easier ability to reproduce software problems, since automated testing takes out the human error in recreating the test steps," she says. Development of such test procedures, execution, test result analysis, documentation and status of problems can all be reduced with automated testing, "enabling the overall test effort and schedule to be reduced."

Automated software testing can apply to all phases of the life cycle, including an automated requirements-traceability matrix, Dustin says, and can provide traceability from requirements to design, development, building of test cases, test environment setup, testing, defect tracking—the works.

Most importantly, some tests, such as memory-leak detection, can hardly be accomplished using manual testing efforts, she says. Also falling into this category are stress and performance testing, high percentages of test coverage and tests with large amounts of test data. "In addition, the emphasis on iterative incremental-development approaches, in which incremental software builds are used and incremental repetitive testing is required, has further contributed to the growth in automated test tools and capabilities."

Bernie Gauf, president and chief technologist of IDT, which serves the government sector, says that many government agencies have heard the call and are seeking to improve their testing processes. One such agency is the Internal Revenue Service. "The IRS has launched an initiative to enhance and expand current testing by integrating industry best–testing practices to gain efficiencies that improve overall testing processes," according to a Washington Post article on June 3, 2007.

Dustin warns about the dangers of treating automated testing as something less than part of your core testing activities. "It is important that automated testing is not treated as a side activity; [for example] asking a tester to automate whenever he gets free time. Testers rarely have free time, and deadlines are always looming. Automated testing requires a mini-development life cycle with test requirements, test design and test implementation and verification. Automated testing can only succeed if it's given the necessary resources."

Here are a few points to remember when planning your approach to test automation.

• Have a process in place before implementing an automation tool. This will help avoid the creation of an ad hoc, non-repeatable and non-measurable test program.

• Initiate automation early in the development cycle and allow sufficient time for tool setup, relevant training and the automation itself.

• Involve test engineers early to minimize the learning curve and maximize test coverage.

• Include software developers so they can keep automation in mind when building the code and can understand the impact of changes they might make.

• Select the right tool by understanding the requirements.

Classes Filling Up Fast
Don't miss your chance to learn test automation firsthand from the industry's top automation experts. Rex Black, Arron Cook, Linda Hayes, Bj Rollison and many other software test experts and practitioners will be in Boston October 2–4 for our annual Software Test & Performance Conference.

Last year's conference sold out completely.

RESERVE YOUR SEAT TODAY!


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