Relevant Empirical Testing Research Challenges and Responses.pdfVIP

Relevant Empirical Testing Research: Challenges and Responses James H. Andrews Department of Computer Science University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, CANADA N6A 5B7 Abstract to improve the software. When we add the costs associated with poor quality to Empirical research on software testing that aims to be the costs associated with achieving quality, we get a “total relevant to industry faces important challenges. In this po- cost” curve which is non-monotonic and concave-up, with sition paper, we review the background on software testing a minimum point. An important goal of the SQA enterprise research and discuss some of the most important challenges. is to find an approximation to this optimal minimum-cost We then give suggestions on how to respond to these chal- point. lenges. Goals of Testing Research. In this context, the overall goal of research on software testing can be taken as find- 1. Background ing ways to help software engineers reach the optimal point in the cost-benefit curve through testing. Research focuses Goals of SQA. We take as our starting point the received on testing techniques that can decrease the costs associated wisdom about the goals of the software quality assurance with poor quality, while not increasing the