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'Good' Organisational Reasons for 'Bad' Software Testing: An Ethnographic Study of Testing in a Small Software Company
Minneapolis, Minnesota May 20-May 26
DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/ICSE.2007.129th International Conference on Soft ...
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David Martin, XRCE, Grenoble
John Rooksby, Lancaster University, UK
Mark Rouncefield, Lancaster University, UK
Ian Sommerville, University of St Andrews, UK
In this paper we report on an ethnographic study of a small software house to discuss the practical work of software testing. Through use of two rich descriptions, we discuss that ?rigour? in systems integration testing necessarily has to be organisationally defined. Getting requirements ?right?, defining ?good? test scenarios and ensuring ?proper? test coverage are activities that need to be pragmatically achieved taking account of organisational realities and constraints such as: the dynamics of customer relationships; using limited effort in an effective way; timing software releases; and creating a market. We discuss how these organisational realities shape (1) requirements testing; (2) test coverage; (3) test automation; and (4) test scenario design.
Citation:
David Martin, John Rooksby, Mark Rouncefield, Ian Sommerville, "'Good' Organisational Reasons for 'Bad' Software Testing: An Ethnographic Study of Testing in a Small Software Company," icse, pp.602-611, 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'07), 2007
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