Is ISSTA Research Relevant to Industry? Alan Hartman IBM Haifa Research Laboratory
How much does testing cost? Perceived cost – to SW Developers – 30-50% of development costs Actual cost – to society – loss of profitability to SW developers and their customers The mythical $59 Billion - Report on the Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing – NIST May pdf
What are the most expensive test activities? Depends who you ask
What are the pressing problems? How to automate more and earlier in the lifecycle? How to incorporate testability into design? How to size the testing effort? How much regression testing to do? How to predict performance early in the lifecycle? How to use/apply existing technology?
My personal appeal to ISSTA Take your latest piece of research and make it work in a production environment. Come out of the ivory tower!
Tips on how to do it Convince management Convince testers Create robust tools Create samples and training material Don’t talk down to testers Don’t talk over their heads
More tips Work with new hires Never let a pilot fail Listen Take your own medicine Be patient