Emilie Engström, PhD Student, LTH
Name: Emelie Engström
Topic: Planning and assessment of regression testing ativities in large, complex and reuse-based software systems
PhD: Planned for mid 2013
Company contacts: Sony Ericsson, ST Ericsson
Industry relevance:
Regression testing is a resource consuming activity in software development. This is particularly true for iterative development approaches, where features are added to existing software in an iterative fashion as well as for product line development approaches were software is systematically reused across projects/products. Regression testing is performed to ensure that previously functioning software is not corrupted by the changes. Studies indicate that 80% of testing cost is regression testing and more than 50% of software maintenance cost is related to testing. (1) Efficient regression testing is crucial for organizations with a large share of their cost in software development.
Regression testing is not an isolated one-off activity, but rather an activity of varying scope and preconditions strongly dependant on the context in which it is applied. Several techniques for regression test selection are proposed which all differs in effectiveness, depending on testing goals, type of system, type and size of changes, level of testing etc. (2). The overall goal of my research is to provide decision support for regression testing in different situations. How much/what do we have to test? Which previous testing can we rely on? How should we balance testing between different test levels/activities or between different products in a product family?
Ongoing tasks:
Topic: Planning and assessment of regression testing ativities in large, complex and reuse-based software systems
PhD: Planned for mid 2013
Company contacts: Sony Ericsson, ST Ericsson
Industry relevance:
Regression testing is a resource consuming activity in software development. This is particularly true for iterative development approaches, where features are added to existing software in an iterative fashion as well as for product line development approaches were software is systematically reused across projects/products. Regression testing is performed to ensure that previously functioning software is not corrupted by the changes. Studies indicate that 80% of testing cost is regression testing and more than 50% of software maintenance cost is related to testing. (1) Efficient regression testing is crucial for organizations with a large share of their cost in software development.
Regression testing is not an isolated one-off activity, but rather an activity of varying scope and preconditions strongly dependant on the context in which it is applied. Several techniques for regression test selection are proposed which all differs in effectiveness, depending on testing goals, type of system, type and size of changes, level of testing etc. (2). The overall goal of my research is to provide decision support for regression testing in different situations. How much/what do we have to test? Which previous testing can we rely on? How should we balance testing between different test levels/activities or between different products in a product family?
Ongoing tasks:
- A multiple industrial case study on the alignment between requirements and test
- History based regression test case prioritization at integration test level – an industrial evaluation
- A case study on improved test scope selection – in a product line context
- Engström, E. & Runeson, P. (2010). Software product line testing - a systematic mapping study. Information and Software Technology, (in press).
- Sabaliauskaité, G., Loconsole, A., Engström, E., Unterkalmsteiner, M., Regnell, B., Runeson, P., Gorschek, T. & Feldt, R. Challenges in Aligning Requirements Engineering and Verification in a Large-Scale Industrial Context. 16th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2010), Essen, Germany, June 2010.
- Engström, E. & Runeson, P. A qualitative survey of regression testing practices. Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, 11th International Conference, Limerick, Ireland, June 2010.
- Engström, E. (2010). Exploring regression testing and software product line testing - research and state of practice. Lic Dissertation. Lund University. May 2010
- Engström, E. (2010). Regression test selection and product line system testing. Third International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation, Paris, France, April 2010.
- Engström, E., Runeson, P. & Wikstrand, G. An empirical evaluation of regression testing based on fix-cache recommendations. International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation, Paris, France, April 2010.
- Engström, E., Runeson, P. & Skoglund, M, A systematic review on regression test selection techniques. Information and Software Technology. Jan 2010.
- E. Engström, M. Skoglund, P. Runeson, Empirical Evaluations of Regression Test Selection Techniques: A Systematic Review, Proceedings of Empirical Software Engineering and Measurements (ESEM), pp. 22-31, Kaiserslautern, Germany, October 2008.
- Runeson, M. Skoglund and E. Engström, Test Benchmarks – what is the question?, TestBench Workshop at International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation, Lillehammer, Norway, April 2008.