Article by: Edward J. Correia
“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.” Read the rest of the article at SD Times
Loading ...