Reference no: EM132294088

Research on Software Testing and Standards

Overview

According to Standards Australia:

"Standards are published documents setting out specifications and procedures designed to ensure products, services and systems are safe, reliable and consistently perform the way they were intended to. They establish a common language which defines quality and safety criteria."

There are several standards, international and national, that relate specifically to software testing. Standards formalize industry best practice and they are agreed upon by professionals in the industry in which the standards apply to.

This assignment is an investigation into those standards. The purpose of the assignment is to help you to:-
• improve your research and comprehension skills
• develop a good understanding of professional industry standards for software testing
• appreciate the value of various processes and methods used in industry to test and evaluate software systems

Learning Outcomes

K1. Critically evaluate software requirements as inputs toward testing of the final solution;

K2. Analyse and critically evaluate appropriate tools and techniques to support the testing process;

K3. Develop a good understanding of selecting and applying measures and models used for testing that are compliant with the appropriate professional industry standards such as the ACS and IEEE;

S1. Analyse and critically evaluate software requirements and proposed solutions;

S2. Apply complex decision making to select appropriate testing techniques;

S3. Write professional level management, planning, quality assurance and testing documentation for a software system;

S4. Apply effective testing techniques to software systems of varying scales and test levels

A1. Develop and maintain plans for scheduling quality assurance tasks including software testing;

Assessment Details

You will need to:
• locate a research paper related to software testing that refers to at least one standard.
• research, comprehend and analyse each document (both the paper and the chosen standard) to find relevant details to answer a set of questions, and
• prepare a written summary report of findings

Requirements:

Questions for the standard:
• What is the standard name?
• Who holds the copyright for the standard?
• Amongst the acknowledged contributors to the document, which universities were involved (if any)?
• What is the scope or intent of the standard?
• What are key terms and understandings needed for the standard to be understood and applied?
• In your own words, what does application of the standard result in? Or, in other words, what does the standard do?
• Finally, what specific relevance to software testing is the standard?

Discuss the paper and how it relates to the standard. For example: does the paper suggest how to improve the standard? Does the paper highlight issues in applying the standard?

Attached is a sample paper (Wichmann and Cox 1992) which refers to the ANSI1/IEEE2 Standard 8293 and ANSI/IEEE Standard 1008. Although this paper is somewhat outdated, it's serves to illustrate the task for this assignment.

Prepare a report of no more than 1,500 words answering all questions. The report should have the following structure.

• an introduction to standards and a brief description of the research paper and chosen standard

• responses to questions for the standard

• listing and a discussion of commonalities and differences between the two documents

• a conclusion summarizing the report findings

Attachment:- Software Testing.rar