Understanding Test Debt

Samarthyam, Ganesh; Muralidharan, Mahesh; Anna, Raghu Kalyan

doi:10.1007/978-981-10-1415-4_1

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Hard to comprehend BDD specifications Investigate BDD test smells, technical debt, and the adoption of test suite comprehension techniques to BDD specifications [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25] Non-adherence to the BDD workflow Investigate the incorporation of maintenance concerns at the core of BDD workflow and tools [38], [39] O10 Scarcity of coaching and material guidelines on BDD Investigate the impact of coaching and guidelines on producing maintainable specifications [4], [21] TABLE III CHALLENGES AND RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES FOR MAINTENANCE AND EVOLUTION OF BDD SPECIFICATIONS on implementing correct software behaviours that led to the birth of BDD [1]. However, a comparative study would shed more light on whether that foreseen BDD's potential has become practically evident.…”

Section: O1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Maintaining behaviour driven development specifications: Challenges and opportunities

Binamungu

Embury

Κωνσταντίνου

2018

2018 IEEE 25th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)

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Abstract-In Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) the behaviour of a software system is specified as a set of example interactions with the system using a "Given-WhenThen" structure. These examples are expressed in high level domain-specific terms, and are executable. They thus act both as a specification of the requirements and as tests that can verify whether the current system implementation provides the desired behaviour or not. This approach has many advantages but also presents some problems. When the number of examples grows, BDD specifications can become costly to maintain and extend. Some teams find that parts of the system are effectively frozen due to the challenges of finding and modifying the examples associated with them. We surveyed 75 BDD practitioners from 26 countries to understand the extent of BDD use, its benefits and challenges, and specifically the challenges of maintaining BDD specifications in practice. We found that BDD is in active use in industry, and that the use of domain specific terms, improving communication among stakeholders, the executable nature of BDD specifications, and facilitating comprehension of code intentions are the main benefits of BDD. The results also showed that BDD specifications suffer the same maintenance challenges found in automated test suites generally. We mapped the survey results to the literature, and propose 10 research opportunities in this area.

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Section: O1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Maintaining behaviour driven development specifications: Challenges and opportunities

Binamungu

Embury

Κωνσταντίνου

2018

2018 IEEE 25th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)

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“…Samarthyam et al [16] present an overview of Test Debts, factors that contribute to this type of debts, and strategies for repayment of acquired Test Debts. These authors also classify Test Debts into: (i) unit testing; (ii) exploratory testing; (iii) manual testing; and (iv) automated testing.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Technical Debts that concern the software testing are known as Test Debts. They arise when inadequate decisions regarding testing activities (e.g., lack of tests, test estimation errors) are made [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, the approaches and techniques used to manage this type of problem were studied in order to propose a solution to assist professionals deal with test debt. However, in spite of works dealing with Test Debts [16][20] [18][22], they do not present in a consolidated manner the possible causes of Test Debts and how they can be identified and managed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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TestDCat 3.0: catalog of test debt subtypes and management activities

et al. 2021

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When deadlines and resources of software projects become scarce, testing is usually in the first row to have its activities aborted or reduced. If defects cannot be found, products quality can be affected. In a software development process, aborted or reduced activities that can bring short-term benefits, but can be harmful to the project in a long run, are considered Technical Debts (TD). When TDs impact testing activities, they are called Test Debt. There are several studies dealing with Test Debt, however, current solutions often deal with specific types of tests (e.g., exploratory and automated tests) and do not address the whole software testing process. Aiming to fill these gaps, this paper proposes a Test Debt Catalog with subtypes of Test Debts and technical debt management activities. This catalog was built based on semi-structured interviews conducted with practitioners who perform testing activities in five projects from industry. With our catalog, we intend to help the management of test debts during the execution of software testing processes.

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“…Rather, testers design tests based on their experience and intuition and execute them on the application. The issue with this method of testing is the rapid accumulation of test debt [26]. Test debt, like technical debt refers to unchecked issues within code that are not addressed in testing.…”

Section: Automated Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Software Testing: A Changing Career

Cunningham

Gambo

Lawless

et al. 2019

Communications in Computer and Information Science

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The software tester is an imperative component to quality software development. Their role has transformed over the last half a century and volumes of work have documented various approaches, methods, and skillsets to be used in that time. Software projects have gone from using monolithic architectures and heavyweight methodologies, to service-oriented and lightweight. Testing has transformed from a sequential step performed by dedicated testers to a continuous activity carried out by various development professionals. Technological advancements have pushed automation into routine test tasks permitting a change of focus for the tester. Management styles and methodologies have pushed development to be agile and lean, towards continuous integration and frequent release. Regardless of these many important changes, the software tester's role remains the verification and validation of software code.

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Understanding Test Debt

Cited by 13 publications

References 11 publications

Maintaining behaviour driven development specifications: Challenges and opportunities

Maintaining behaviour driven development specifications: Challenges and opportunities

TestDCat 3.0: catalog of test debt subtypes and management activities

Software Testing: A Changing Career

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