| 1. |
- Minhas, Nasir Mehmood, 1973-
(författare)
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Regression Testing Challenges and Solutions : An Industry-Academia Perspective
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Software quality assurance (QA) is an essential activity in the software development lifecycle. Among the different QA activities, regression testing is a challenging task for large-scale software development. Regression testing is a well-researched area, and a large number of techniques have been proposed to fulfill the needs of industry. Despite the extensive research, the adoption of proposed regression testing techniques in the industry is limited. Studies show that there is a visible gap between research and practice.Objective: This work aims at reducing the gap between industry and academia in regression testing. To fulfill this aim we have the following objectives:1) Understanding the practitioners' goals regarding regression testing.2) Understanding the current state of regression testing practice and challenges in the industry.3) Investigating the testing research applicable in an industrial context.Method: We conducted multiple studies using different methods.To explore the industry perspective on regression testing we used focus group and interview-based studies. To explore solutions from the literature, we used the systematic literature review and systematic mapping study.Results: This thesis presents the practitioners' specific regression testing goals. The identified goals are confidence, controlled fault slippage, effectiveness, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. The challenges identified in the thesis are of two categories, 1) management related challenges and 2) technical challenges. Technical challenges relate to test suite maintenance, test case selection, test case prioritization, evaluation of regression testing.We have mapped 26 empirically evaluated regression testing techniques to the context, effect, and information taxonomies, and provided a guide to the practitioners regarding the adoption of the techniques in an industrial setting. We have also classified 56 model-based test case generation techniques regarding their strengths/limitations, input/intermediate models used, and relevance to the industrial context.Conclusions: The challenges identified in this study are not new for research and practice. There could be two reasons regarding the presence of recurring challenges: 1) regression testing techniques proposed in the literature do not fit the companies’ context, 2) or, companies are not aware of the availability of the techniques that could be suitable for their context. To support the adoption of existing research on regression testing in the industry, we have presented three taxonomies. These taxonomies, allow the characterization of regression testing techniques and enable to determine which of these techniques might be suitable in a given context. Furthermore, the identification of information needs for these techniques would be helpful to learn the implications regarding the cost of adoption. Regarding the support in test case generation, we conclude that current research on interaction model-based test case generation techniques did not illustrate the use of rigorous methodology, and currently, model-based test case generation techniques have low relevance for the industrial problems.
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| 2. |
- Irshad, Mohsin, 1984-
(författare)
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Realizing the systematic reuse of automated acceptance tests in practice
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Context: Automated acceptance testing has become a relevant practice of agile software development (e.g., Extreme Programming). Automated acceptance tests (AATs) are closely tied to requirements and provide a mechanism for continuous validation of requirements as system-level tests. Studies have shown that these tests are costly to develop, maintain, and reuse.Objectives: This thesis examines and supports the systematic reuse of automated acceptance tests by providing approaches to search, identity, adapt reusable test cases while considering the reuse costs. Additionally, the maintainability and usage of automated acceptance tests in largescale software projects are studied.Method: We used various research methods to investigate development, reuse, and maintaining the automated acceptance tests. Workshops and interviews of practitioners were used to identify the benefits and challenges of automated acceptance tests. Next, method engineering was used to construct a systematic reuse process for automated acceptance tests. Qualitative feedback collected using a survey, and industrial demonstration examined the reuse process’s performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and necessary facilitating conditions. Two systematic literature reviews are used to identify techniques to adapt tests for future reuse opportunities and calculate the reuse costs of automated acceptance tests. Later, we developed and evaluated an approach for refactoring behavior-driven development-based automated acceptance tests using action research.Results: A cost-aware systematic reuse process was constructed to support the reuse of automated acceptance tests containing eleven activities. For each activity, guidelines on expected input, expected output, the actors performing the activity, and techniques (automated using scripts) are suggested and evaluated. The techniques involve approaches to support development for reuse and methods to calculate the costs of reusing automated acceptance tests. The industrial evaluation of the reuse process and the techniques showed its usefulness and relevance for the industry. Furthermore, seven challenges (i.e., the scale of the software projects, ownership, lack of competence, cost benefits, specification of behaviors in large-scale projects, difficulty writing system-level test-cases, and versioning control of behaviors) and five benefits (i.e., understanding of a business aspect of requirements, improved quality of requirements, a guide to system-level use-cases, reuse of artifacts in large-scale projects, and help for test organization.) of using automated acceptance tests in large-scale projects are identified with software practitioners’ help. Later, we proposed a semiautomated four-step approach for pre-processing, measuring, ranking, and identifying refactoring candidates. The approach and the two proposed measures were successfully evaluated using two industrial projects. It was noted that similarity measures could support the maintenance of the specification base using refactoring.Conclusions: The studies show that automated acceptance tests are reusable and can be refactored using our proposed approach. The evaluation shows that the results apply to the software industry in the evaluated context. However, further work is required to evaluate the reuse process in different contexts.
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| 3. |
- Nurdiani, Indira, et al.
(författare)
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Understanding the order of agile practice introduction : Comparing agile maturity models and practitioners’ experience
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Systems and Software. - : Elsevier Inc.. - 0164-1212 .- 1873-1228. ; 156, s. 1-20
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context: Agile maturity models (AMMs) suggest that agile practices are introduced in a certain order. However, whether the order of agile practice introduction as suggested in the AMMs is relevant in industry has not been evaluated in an empirical study. Objectives: In this study, we want to investigate: (1) order of agile practice introduction mentioned in AMMs, (2) order of introducing agile practices in industry, and (3) similarities and differences between (1) and (2). Methods: We conducted a literature survey to identify strategies proposed by the AMMs. We then compared the AMMs’ suggestions to the strategies used by practitioners, which we elicited from a survey and a series of interviews from an earlier study. Results: The literature survey revealed 12 AMMs which provide explicit mappings of agile practices to maturity levels. These mappings showed little agreement on when practices should be introduced. Comparison of the AMMs’ suggestions and the empirical study revealed that the guidance suggested by AMMs are not aligned with industry practice. Conclusion: Currently, AMMs do not provide sufficient information to guide agile adoption in industry. Our results suggest that there might be no universal strategy for agile adoption that works better than others. © 2019 Elsevier Inc.
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| 4. |
- Nurdiani, Indira, et al.
(författare)
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Understanding the order of agile practice introduction : Comparing agile maturity models and practitioners’ experience
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agile software development has become increasingly popular over the past years. Agile methods are perceived to address challenges caused by the rapid change in the market while reducing time to market and development. As the popularity of Agile method is growing, the need for Agile adoption guidance also increases. Over the past years, Agile Maturity Models (AMMs) have been proposed to offer guidelines in Agile adoption. Agile maturity models (AMMs) suggest that Agile practices are introduced in a specific order. However, a number of evaluations of AMMs show that they are not properly validated and not suited for use in industry. Current evaluations of AMMs are based on certain criteria and not based on empirical studies. There are no studies that evaluate AMMs' suggestion to introduce Agile in certain order against industry practice. The relevance of the AMMs in the industry is not yet examined.In this study, we conducted a literature review to identify the order of Agile practice introduction mentioned in AMMs. We then compared the AMMs' suggestions to the strategies used by practitioners, which we elicited from a survey and a series of interviews.The literature survey revealed 12 AMMs which provide explicit mappings of Agile practices to maturity levels. These mappings show that the AMMs are not in agreement pertaining to the which practice is to be included in which maturity levels. The AMMs do not provide clear information nor rationale why certain practices need to be introduced in a specific maturity level. Comparison of the AMMs suggestions and the empirical study revealed that the guidance suggested by AMMs are not aligned with industry practice. The AMMs take a simplistic view of introducing Agile practices in a pre-determined order without consideration of the different contexts in industry. Our study indicates that practitioners iteratively add, remove, and modify the set of Agile practices they use to match their needs and contexts. In addition, the AMMs do not consider the potential perceived trade-off of adding Agile practices, such as team member discomfort, conflicts with other teams, and recurring bugs.Currently, AMMs do not provide sufficient information to guide Agile adoption in the industry. Associating Agile maturity with sets of Agile practices is inadequate and too simplified. Our results suggest that there might be no universal strategy for Agile adoption that works better than others.
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| 5. |
- Weigel, Kai, et al.
(författare)
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Electron irradiation induced modifications of Ti(1-x)AlxN coatings and related buffer layers on steel substrates
- 2021
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Ingår i: Vacuum. - : Elsevier. - 0042-207X .- 1879-2715. ; 185
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ti(1-x )AlxN hard coatings were prepared by reactive magnetron sputtering onto steel substrates (51CrV4 - 1.8159) and subsequently exposed for a short-time (similar to 1 s) to high-flux electron beam (EB) treatment. Morphology, composition and the structure of as-deposited and EB treated coatings were investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). It was found that the EB treatment had only a minor influence on the morphology and crystallinity of the Ti(1-x)AlxN phase, however, the stress-free lattice parameter and partly the compressive stress in the coatings were clearly reduced by the treatment. On the other hand, major changes of composition profiles and structure were observed in the metallic buffer layer between substrate and Ti(1-x)AlxN. The observed modifications in the coating-substrate system are explained by rapid heat up and radiation damage due to the fast electron exposure.
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