Let's talk about bugs!
Peter H. Carstensen, Carsten Sørensen, Tuomo Tuikka · 1995
Software testing is often a complex proc-ess potentially involving a large number of geographically distributed people with different perspectives and compe-tencies. Software testers, software devel-opers and project managers engage in discussions about the software errors found, they negotiate the relative impor-tance of the bugs, they allocate responsi-bilities and resources, they coordinate who is doing what, etc. They talk about bugs. In order to coordinate and manage talking about bugs, a number of means for coordination are applied. The aim of this paper is to analyze coordination work in software testing in order to pro-mote general requirements for computer support. We have studied the testing of more than 200,000 lines of code at Foss Electric, a Danish manufacturing com-pany, and focused on two aspects: First-ly, the coordination activities related to the process of distributed registration, classification, diagnosis, correction, and verification of software errors, as well as the monitoring of the state-of-affairs of testing activities. Secondly, the mecha-nisms used to support the coordination. The analysis resulted in the identifica-tion of the need for computer support for coordinating this part of the software testing process, e.g., support of distribut-ed classification, routing of information, and facilities providing an overview of state of affairs.